


Sleepless Nights and Arkham Frights

by ScorchedAlpine



Series: Of Bird Bones and Breadcrumbs [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Under the Red Hood, batfam - Fandom
Genre: Arguing, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily (DCU) Feels, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Brotherly Bonding, Canon-Typical Violence, Dead Robins, Developing Relationship, Dysfunctional Family, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Issues, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, I gave Jason a dog because yes, Insomnia, Jason Todd Has Issues, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason Todd's Rubix Cube, Jason-centric, Lazarus Pit, Nightmares, Pneumonia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Sickfic, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:47:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24006115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScorchedAlpine/pseuds/ScorchedAlpine
Summary: Jason's back in Gotham; struggling to balance life as the Red Hood, his own issues, and his brittle relationship with his family without screwing up or giving up who he is.It would be a lot easier if he could get some sleep.And if he'd never discovered that Lazarus Rage could relapse. But hey, when was life ever easy?(Fic Spoiler: Major Character Death tag is not a real death, but thought it should be tagged anyway)
Relationships: Roy Harper & Jason Todd, Roy Harper/Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne
Series: Of Bird Bones and Breadcrumbs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1637680
Comments: 60
Kudos: 353





	1. False Start

Jason knows he’s an insomniac.

He knows in the same way he knows he’s meant to fight crime. That he trusts his teammates. That the sky is blue and grass is green. He knows, but knowing doesn’t help jack shit. Knowing why he can’t manage to get any sleep doesn’t help him fix the problem. If anything, it pisses him off even more.

Jay and sleep just don’t get along. They’re like the world’s shittiest dance partners; full of stumbling steps and stomped-on toes. When he lies on his back in bed with his head turned he knows exactly how many bricks are visible in the wall he stares at. He’s counted them over and over again by the light of a laptop left open. Whoever said counting sheep worked was a goddamn liar.

He’s tried everything he can think of aside from tranqing himself or asking Roy to knock him out. So instead he patrols until he can barely see straight and takes a quick shower before falling into bed. Never as cold as he likes it, because it just brings him to alertness a little too much. He was one of the few people in the world that genuinely enjoyed an ice bath.

Roy’s different. With everything he does there's some kind of purpose. The guy can eat a bowl of cereal and look like he’s doing it for fundamental reasons other than a simple 2pm craving for Cheerios. But Jason can see the hum of energy underneath like the precursor to a lightning strike. Static and wild, getting worse and worse.

Roy sleeps like shit because his brain is the one that decides when to shut the fuck up and stop thinking, not him. He dances in full gear in the living room to get some of it out before patrol so he’s not jittery when he can’t afford to be. Somehow, Jason counts him as both one of the most hyper people he knows, and one of the most… well, not calm, but calm-adjacent. Neither of them can be described that way because of their take-no-shit attitudes and the sheer fact that they are their mentors’ respective wild child.

Kori spends less and less time in the Gotham safehouse. He gets it; their situations are different and growing more so everyday. Roy and Jason were trained with the intention of protecting specific territories. Prowling around like guard dogs and tracking down trouble. It wasn’t quite her style and they all understood and accepted it. After all, life would end up getting boring if they all worked the same way.

Currently, Kori’s in Eastern Europe working a case on a pretty vicious arms trade while the two of them are drug-busting in Gotham. That, and battling through equally bad bouts of insomnia. Jason managed to snatch about an hour the night prior before waking up in a cold sweat with a rabbit-fast heart rate and bile churning in his stomach. An hour of sleep in three days and he was starting to jump at his own fucking shadow, noise echoing in his ears that had never existed. He was worn out and worn down.

Roy on the other hand, was like the Energizer Bunny with the off switch ripped out. He’s not quite manic, his energy level is the same as it always is. The real issue lies with the fact that it doesn’t dip like it should. Jason probably wouldn’t have any idea if they didn’t practically live together. Everything, even just the way that he stands, screams sleep deprivation. Fiddling with pieces of tech at 3am because he’s so goddamn frustrated at just laying in bed getting increasingly more agitated as the hours tick by.

Day four results in one of the worst fights they’ve ever gotten in. A knock-down, drag out screaming match. It ended up getting so loud between the shrieking at one another and slamming doors that their downstairs neighbor pounds on the door like she’s trying to break it down, shouting that she’s gonna call the police if they don’t calm down and shut the hell up.

Roy intercepts him as he goes through the door, knowing that the amount of tech and weapons parts in the apartment would be a massive red flag to any cops that showed up. Possibly enough to break their aliases and make them switch to new ones. Thank god they’d been smart enough to keep the bits involving Red Hood and Arsenal to an angry hiss.

Roy puts a hand on the door just as he goes to open it, still visibly angry. “I got it.” he snaps, blocking him. Muscles coiled like a pissed-off alley cat.

Jason breathes hard out of his nose. “Roy, I can answer a goddamn door.”

“Whatever the fuck this is, it’s on pause. Go look in a fucking mirror.” he says shortly, voice low as he struggles to keep the anger that had been raging for an hour and a half in check.

The call for a pause took him aback, enough to actually make him pay attention and listen through the rage-fueled frustration in his veins. He could hear the lady from downstairs start in on berating Roy for the two of them waking her up at ten at night as he stalked away. The sight of his reflection in the mirror stopped him dead in his tracks.

Jason white-knuckled the edge of the sink, bile churning in his stomach. Lazarus green eyes stared back at him, so concentrated in color they almost looked like they were glowing. For once it had crept up on him; he hadn’t noticed the itch in his veins and the distortion at the edges of his vision. The raw, grated feeling of his nerves. Jason ungrits his teeth and breathes deeply, working harder than he’s had to in a while to calm himself down. It takes so long that he distantly hears the door shut again. Roy appears in the open doorway, eyeing him warily.

“Number?”

He huffs a dry laugh. “I don’t even know right now. It fucking snuck up on me.” he admitted. He turned on the tap, splashing his face with freezing water to snap his senses back into alignment. It doesn’t really work but it helps him to feel more like a human being.

Roy slid down the wall, resting his elbows on his knees. “Good news is she’s not gonna call the cops on us. Bad news, she doesn’t like us anymore.” he joked.

Jason let go of the sink, picking his own wall and sliding down to sit on the floor. His reflection had looked like absolute hell, shadows under his eyes so dark it looked like he’d never slept a wink in his life. Jason felt like the corpse he was buried as, blood replaced by static electricity and shaking like a hypothermic chihuahua

Roy closed his eyes, going boneless and letting the wall do the work to keep him sitting upright. “Can we agree not to unpause that trainwreck?” he said quietly, “Cause that fucking sucked.”

Thank god. “Yeah.” he agreed, resting his head in his hands. He kept his palms over his eyes, blocking out the ugly glare of the fluorescent lights. “I’m sorry. That was…. Yeah.”

Roy snorts. “Jay, I had just as much skin in that game as you did.” he pointed out, “I know what you’re doing man, and it was both of our faults.” Somehow, he was able to read between the lines like it was a novel.

“I wouldn’t even get behind the wheel of a car right now; I’m off patrol tonight.” Roy announced, bitterness so thick it curdled in his voice. He could hear the redhead reach an arm up and smack around blindly at the wall for a second before he hit the switch to kill the lights. “Can I see ‘em?”

Jason sighed, taking his hands away from his eyes and crossing his arms loosely over his chest instead. Roy narrowed his eyes in the dark, staring critically at his face. “It’s almost gone; you’re good.” he confirmed, unable to keep the relief out of his voice. Jason didn’t blame him. The Lazarus Pit itself was genuinely an unsettling concept, and they both held the belief that everything and anything to do with it was really fucking strange.

It was almost funny. They made a pretty pathetic pair, sitting red-eyed on the bathroom floor in their pajamas. Dressed in sweats and the two hoodies they’d stolen from Dick when they’d swung by after Roy had fallen into a balcony and busted his face up. Dick annoyed him to no end, but damn he had some comfortable jackets stashed in his closet. There were little flecks of blood stained into the side of the collar of Roy’s, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Jason snuggled tighter, feeling the fleecy inside against his chilled skin and trying to ignore how vividly he felt like shit. The sensation of spiders crawling the length of his spine. Nerves raw from a tidal wave of lazarus rage rearing its ugly head and an hour and a half or screaming at each other about literally whatever they could think of that wasn’t below the belt. (off-limits topics in fights included classics such as addiction, Jason’s mental health, Roy’s mental health, the specifics of Jay’s death, Oliver Queen, etc.) At one point he was pretty sure that they yelled at each other about leaving cabinets open.

“Yeah… patrol’s not happening for me either.” he conceded bitterly, giving in to the leaden feeling in his bones and the fact that he’d go toe-to-toe with at least ten of the robo-beasts from a few months back for an undisturbed night of sleep. “I have a plan.”

“And what would that be?”

“We don’t leave until we fix it.” he proposed, only halfway serious. At that point, it was all he could think of for a solution.

Roy burst into a fit of snickering. He fussed with his hair, taking a pink elastic out of his pajama pants pocket and scooping up the strands, piling it into a sloppy bun high on the back of his head. The only man on earth that could make 1000 flyaways look perfect.

“Hate to break it to you, but we both know this isn’t something you ‘fix’ just like that. We just gotta endure it I guess.”

Jason tensed for a second, biting his tongue for a moment before throwing in the towel. “This wouldn’t be annoying if we were dealing with patrol the old way.”

Roy sighed, reminiscing the days where they’d been battling with people that truly deserved a bullet or arrow to the heart; when they’d torched their bridges so nobody could preach mercy at them or tell them how disappointing they were. A guy kills 25 people, Jason was going to put his severed head in a duffel bag. Well... something along those lines. Gordon had gotten so many crooked cops and dirty guards out of the system that a lot of the criminals the vigilantes left for them ended up actually staying in jail for once. It ended up making it harder for them, but hey, he was fine with not adding to the blood on his hands if he didn’t need to.

“You’re telling me. Non-lethal with a bow is precise as hell.” Roy explained, flailing his hands in a while gesture. Frustrated, but all the anger had gone with the end of the screaming. Now he just sounded as tired as he looked. “Kill shots are like hitting the broadside of a barn; an arrow to the chest is pretty much a done deal. I try shooting someone in the leg right now and I’d probably shred their femoral artery.”

Silence stretched for a while. The effects of the Lazarus pit were harder to keep in check under sleep deprivation. Jason had it in a pretty firm headlock, but every once in a while it gave a little shake that he didn’t anticipate. Good to know, annoying to deal with. “So..., now what?”

Roy shrugged. “I’m thinking… inventory, and then digital recon until our eyes bleed.” he offered up, waggling his eyebrows. Jason rolled his eyes, getting up and offering a hand to pull Roy to his feet.

The shuffled as a dead-eyed unit around the apartment, pulling every piece of weaponry in the entire place and piling it onto every available surface in the ‘living room’. Both of them were meticulous about their gear. Roy had insisted on keeping it a secret, but after he got the replacement for his snapped grappling line from the bats he’d tested it over and over for a half hour before daring to deploy it any higher than two stories.

They divvied up the stash, individually taking stock and going over each piece with a fine-tooth comb to check for damage. Nicks that were too deep. Any wear that compromised the function or quality of it.

He ran his fingers over the chestplate of his current set of body armor. It was kevlar with sections of shell, made flexible so he could still twist in the air and pull the necessary tricks in a brawl, but wouldn’t get him killed when someone took a shot at him. 99% of the time it never connected, but he wasn’t willing to play the bullshit game of playing chance with the 1% that it did. There were a few scratches and tiny dings but not nearly enough damage to compromise the integrity of the armor.

There were tiny scratches on the material of his gloves from scaling buildings and handling wire incorrectly. Grappling wire was perfectly fine if you handled it right, but he’d never been the most delicate with it. The gloves helped to make it so he wasn’t walking around with angry marks all over his hands.

He sent off a text to Barbara before he forgot, letting her know they were off patrol that night but keeping the reasons as vague as possible. The last thing Jason wanted was a swarm of bats and birds descending on the safehouse and smothering him with their good intentions.

It occured to him that hey, maybe two very sleep deprived men putting a bunch of knives and guns (unloaded) in a giant pile right next to them wasn’t in their top 10 best ideas ever, but he really just couldn’t bring himself to care at that point. The moon rose higher and higher in the sky as they slowly picked through their stashes. The soft clanks of metal and plastic punctuated the silence aside from sparse chatter.

Jason could tell that Roy was biting his tongue on something. He kept glancing over when he thought Jay wouldn’t notice, working his jaw in the same way he did when he was thinking too much.

He frowned, inspecting the worn out grip of the knife in his hand before sliding his eyes over to the archer. Their eyes caught and Jason tossed the blade into the meager discard pile. “I know you want to say something.”

Roy sighed, typing in a new category on his computer as he finished with his last knife. He was only throwing away one to Jason’s two but he did have more to begin with. What could he say? He appreciated a good knife.

“Did you mean it earlier? When you talked about the way we used to handle things?” he asked, keeping his eyes trained on the screen. Trying to look like he wasn’t invested too much in the answer.

Jason shrugged. “I mean, yeah. Some of it wasn’t the best but there was good fucking reason for that. Are you asking me if I’m never going to kill someone again?”

Roy shrugged back, which definetly meant yes.

Jason considered for a moment. “Let’s put it this way. When the Joker busts out of Arkham again, if I find him, I’m taking the shot.” he said carefully, “And after that… I don’t really know what happens.”

“What do you mean?”

“What happens when the streak ends? Because let’s face it, this-” he started, flailing his hands around to gesture at nothing in particular and everything around them, “whatever kind of peace this is, it’s not going to last forever. We’ll be fine. But I’m not so sure about the bats.”

Wow, they were really talking about this. The ‘hey we’re adding this to the pile of skeletons in the closet’ topic that he tried hard not to think about, no matter how loudly they threw themselves against the door. But he felt… fine. Call it whatever you want; sleep deprivation, getting betting, but he didn’t feel like he was going to break into pieces talking about it.

Roy’s hands froze over the keyboard for a moment before he carefully shut the laptop, studying Jason’s face. He leaned against the side of the couch, drawing up his knees and loosely wrapping his arms around them. “I wish I could tell you what the fallout’s gonna be like, but I have no idea.” he admitted.

“It’s going to suck.” he laughed, quirking his mouth and picking at his boots to check them over for damage. Hm… they could use new laces. The current ones were starting to fray. Shin guards went over the front of them, but he was doing maintenance anyway. Might as well. “The same speeches on mercy, how we’re ‘supposed to be better’. If I have a chance to kill the Joker and I don’t, and then he goes and plants a bomb that kills twenty people, who’s responsible? Because I would feel like it was me.” He tugged the laces from his boots, enjoying the sharpness of the noise as they slid out, before starting to twine a new pair of laces in. It was weird that they had spare shoelaces, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Those twenty people would be on me, because I didn’t take that shot.” he repeated, keeping an internal watch on the lazarus itch crawling across his skin. “And I’m not willing to not make that move just because I’m going to get a shitstorm my way.”

He sighed, typing a bow and settling the shoes in front of him. “But I’m not going to do this like last time. Pit Madness made it too easy to just put a bullet in a problem and be done with it.” he admitted, “And I can’t roll with that; it’s my fucking brain and I don’t need a backseat driver. Besides, they’re actually staying in jail now. But… if someone needs to go… they go. I’m not trading multiple lives for one; I can’t work like that.” He leveled his gaze at Roy, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “But I’m never going to try and tell you how to be Arsenal.”

Roy stared at him, something so distant in his blue eyes that he didn’t know where it was. “If I thought that it was possible to do this and never take a life I wouldn’t, but if an arrow to the heart is gonna save enough people to warrant one, then I’ll gladly fire it. Sometimes protecting the public has a cost. Look at the Lanterns, at Wonderwoman, hell even Flash has gotten his hands dirty. We’ve got a lot more blood on our hands then they do but we’re not in the minority, Jay.” he said gently, turning a blade over in his hands.

“I know,” he admitted, twisting his cord bracelet around and around his wrist with a finger. Kori had given it to him when she’d left for an extended time off-planet. Simple black, but each one of them had one. Something to keep them together when they were apart. “I also know that I stand a good chance of losing a few of them when it happens, and I hate that I’m saying this but I don’t want it to happen. Again.”

Roy slumped his shoulders, blowing a stray piece of hair from his face. “Just hold onto it while you can, know that you’ll survive when it happens. It’s not the same cause they were never my family, more of just mentors, but I survived losing everyone back in Star City.” he reminisced, checking over an arrow. He’d made them thinner for the sake of being able to keep more on him.

Raiding the bat cave for supplies had been fun. They’d moved a lot a shit since the last time he’d really been around. Hadn’t really had much time for snooping with surgical wounds and a broken leg for the pair of them to deal with.

He twirled the arrow in his fingers like a pen. “Wish it had shaken out differently, but wishing for things has never changed jack-shit. It feels like maybe ESPECIALLY not for us puny humans. We’re never going to get everything we desire, life isn’t fair, yada yada yada, but it doesn’t mean we can’t dig in and hold on to the shit we want for as long as possible, right.” he pointed out, “It’s kinda how we’ve already been living.”

“That is some mystic wisdom right there.” he snorted. Roy flicked the arrow sideways and tossed it over to him. “Don’t press that button on the fletching.” he warned, changing the subject before it got too depressing. “Or we’d have to find a new safehouse.”

“Explosive.” he deducted, rolling the thin metal shaft between two fingers. Despite the fact that Roy had drawn sharpie tiny designs all over this one in a bout of insomnia induced boredom, it looked pretty badass.

“Oh yeah.” Roy cracked his jaw with a yawn, rubbing at the tight muscles at the side near his ear. “Big motherfucker. Built it for structural damage; might turn people into a red stain if we ever used it on patrol. ‘S why it’s marked up like that.”

Jason grinned. “Thought that was because you were just bored.” Roy rolled his eyes, catching the explosive arrow in one hand as Jason tossed it back. He’d be worried throwing it if he wasn’t already aware of how well-made it was. “Very funny, jackass. Nobody expects you to scribble all over important shit; so people would assume it’s not important.” he explained.

“Ah. Method to the madness.”

“You know it.”

Inventory lapses into a comfortable silence, but as they move onto doing digital recon Jason can’t help but think back to the no-longer skeleton conversation.

The streak was going to end. It was a pretty wild coincidence that it hadn’t already. At some point in the possibly near future, there would be a dead criminal at the feet of either himself or Roy. Nobody was going to die just so he kept a few drops from the river of blood he’d spilled in his life. Civilians weren’t paying that price as long as he could help it. It was a weight that would cripple the atlas of his conscience like a bat to the back of the knees.

Roy had been smart where he had been stupid. If reconciling with Oliver had crossed his mind, there had never been even a second where it showed. Roy had maintained a careful distance between him and the other archer. Even avoiding anyone related to Queen in any way. Black Canary, Hal Jordan, Hawkman. Complete and total radio silence.

Jason wanted to go back in time and smack some sense into himself. Stop him from getting sucked back into the family. Roy’s ability to completely detach was something he could have used.

Granted, Jason had no problem with the execution of cutting people out of his life, but he didn’t possess Roy’s ability to not care. It took more, little barbs snagging in his heart as he cut out chosen attachments like tumors. Roy could do it like a trained surgeon while Jason stabbed it out like he was trying to kill a spider with a knife. Echoes of hurt long after the wound had scabbed over. He was just the dumbass that had picked it back open.

The root of the problem was that he couldn’t just… not love someone. Even when he’d tried to kill him, deep (hitting bedrock kind of deep. Titanic kind of deep) down he’d still cared about Bruce. Even with as much of an utter piece of shit he’d been, he’d had a father before, but Bruce had treated him like a son. Despite all the shit that happened, the barb that had stuck when he’d carved the head bat out had been a painful one.

In theory, he could leave now. Jason was well aware he could leave anything whenever he wanted. Could vanish from Gotham and go back to drifting around the planet and some of space, busting cartels and human trafficking rings with the occasional assist in some galactic battle or other. Disappear from the Outlaws if shit ever truly went sideways. Disappear from vigilantism… probably not.

The only logical move when the dry streak ended was to get out of Dodge, dodge being Gotham. Roy might stay for a while, he didn’t know, but he had a sneaking suspicion that the archer had a bit of a thing for the dark and dingy city.

Roy’s asleep. At some point in Jason’s mental tangent race, Roy had slowly tipped to the side. His side was pressed flush against the recliner, head tipped forward with a river of burnt orange hair concealing his face in a perfect imitation of the girl from ‘The Ring’. Sleeping sitting up; one of the many talents natural to chronically overworked crime fighters.

Jason smiled, shifting into a more comfortable position on the floor. He’d turn off Roy’s laptop to protect the battery but running the risk of waking him up wasn’t worth it. A net of information for one of Dick’s cases in Bludhaven graced the screen of his own. They traded off bits (rarely the really important ones, they were all control freaks) of cases they were stuck on to see if a different perspective could crack it further open.

Overdose trails. Jason had a talent, more of an obsessive drive actually, for drawing lines and making connections. At one point he’d been under the wing of the world’s greatest detective. Old habits died pretty hard.

Compiling every single record he could find into a single file, then looking for common factors. He HATED to admit it, but Tim was a lot like him in that regard. The mentality that absolutely nothing could afford to be overlooked.

Even if two victims bought drinks at the same Starbucks it could be relevant to the case. That meant that they’d been in the same location at the same time and he could look for more linked by the same small detail. There’s a reason his thing to cool his nerves off was a Rubix cube; he had a thing for puzzles.

The lines start to blur together after a few hours. Roy hadn’t woken up. Hadn’t so much as twitched in is sleep. Nothing short of a miracle considering the shitty circumstances. Jason quirks his mouth, chewing on his lip as he tried and fails to read over a few suspicious bank statements. Exhausted and more than mildly jealous of Roy’s nap, he tips his head back against the couch for a moment.


	2. Say Goodnight, Jaybird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Jason sleeps, he dreams. For some people that's a good thing. For him... not so much. (Gore warning)

He’s not sure exactly how he’d gotten down there, but all he can see as he turns is a hallway that he knows for a fact is deep in the bowels of Arkham Asylum. The last time he’d been down there he’d gotten out unnoticed. An experiment to see exactly how in bad shape the security was. And yikes, had it been awful.

Jason is acutely, painfully aware of the fact that he’s got no gear. Nothing at all. Hell, he sleeps with a knife strapped to his leg as a favor to his own paranoia but for some reason he’s got shit nothing in the way of weaponry. He doesn’t even have any shoes on. Something is very, very wrong.

The floor is freezing underneath his bare feet as he walks. The mental map in his head is dated a few years but it should still be reliable. It wasn’t like they’d ever renovated anything other than cells, and that was just when they needed special add-ons for villains with special skills. He skims his fingers along the rough wall of the passageway, coming to a stop.

Where the fuck is the door?

His brow furrows in confusion, skating his fingers across the rock one last time to make sure. Jason presses his fingers into the grouting between the stones, looking for weak spots. Nothing. Sturdy and unyielding as it should be if he wasn’t 100% fucking positive that there was supposed to be a door there. Hell, he’d gone through it the last time he was there.

The alarm light flashes overhead, flooding the hallway with red light. Distantly, he can hear the siren begin to wail upstairs. Eerie and long, it distorts in the stone hallway like a mourning ghost. Great, he was in a shitty horror movie. Even before the alarms had gone off, there’d been a growing sense of dread in his gut that just kept getting bigger. Going from cracks to chasms.

This wasn’t good. The Arkham alarms meant two things; fire or breakout. And the siren was the calling card to a breakout.

Fuck… he was in some serious trouble. Stuck inside with no gear, no phone, no comms, and no weapons. Standing barefoot in the hallway like a lost idiot in a pair of sweats and a thin, white t-shirt. Even his cord bracelet was gone, and he slept and showered with it on. Worse comes to worst, he’d fight with his fists and his feet. A good night as any for an old-fashioned brawl.

Jason abandoned his search for the door out he knew was supposed to be there, starting through the hallway again. There was no good reason for him to be down there, and he couldn’t think of any passable excuse. He needed to steal a uniform. Guard, therapist, maintenance worker, whatever… he just needed to blend in.

There was a massive building full of people that wanted to rip him to shreds upstairs, but nothing marked him as the Red Hood. Anonymity might just be the thing to save his ass until the bats showed up. He hated the fact that he had to rely on Bruce and his brood to help him out, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

An Arkham breakout was an all-call. Every available bat in the city would be headed his way, possibly even Clark if it was a really bad one, and they were nothing if not punctual. All Jason had to do was stick it out until backup arrived. He took a deep breath and tried to ignore the fact that he was underground. Basements were fine, but apparently creepy tunnels were stretching his tolerance with claustrophobia a little too thin. Chasms to bottomless pits.

Footsteps echoed through the corridor, the faint light of flashlight beams shining on the cracked stone. He froze midstep. Jason moved without making a sound, old instincts hammered in from Robin training and vigilante life, but nothing had gone his way in the past bit so he wasn’t taking any chances.The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, arms breaking out in gooseflesh the before second he heard the pack of guards break out into shouts. Shit, they’d seen him. Shouldn’t even have been possible but what fucking ever. Time to go.

He turns on his heel and bolts, hauling ass back through the hallway as the guards pursue. The turns and gaps where other halls adjoin are in the wrong places but he decides to write them off. No use in trying to figure out where to go if all his information was mixed up, even if it was starting to severely get on his last nerve

Jason bounds up a set of stairs he doesn’t recognize, taking two at a time in his efforts to outrun the guards. There’s a door at the top, and he throws it open and stumbles out into a cell block.

The green mile. Of all of the fucking places in Arkham that he could’ve ended up in, it just had to be the cell block reserved for the most batshit crazy of the insane. It’s almost a good thing that he’s got nothing to tie him to the Red Hood; most everyone in the block would jump at the chance to tear his throat out.

He takes off, sprinting for the other end where he knows is a door to the rest of the facility. Probably. Nothing was making sense. God, could he never just get a little bit of a break?

Cheers erupt from inside the cells, villains spitting venom and jeering at the guards as they spill out of the stairway. Rooting for him to win when they didn’t know he was one of the ones to help lock them in there. Really goddamn ironic.

Five guards had turned into fifteen as he ran at the wall, kicking off to the grab the ledge of the second floor. He dug his fingers into the gaps of the grated flooring and used the momentum to swing himself up, hooking a leg over the railing to boost himself over. The second his feet touched the floor he was off again. Running like his life depended on it because at the moment he was panicking enough for it to genuinely feel like it.

He had to lose them. Then again, it was Arkham; they couldn’t keep people in the building for shit. Even if they’d upped their game recently he would bet a duffle bag packed with cash (who knew busting drug rings was so lucrative?) on his ability to break himself out in 48 hours if he was smart about it and played stupid. Stupid enough to get them to underestimate him and make his life easy later.

Didn’t change the fact that everything was wrong. The next door he threw open was wooden instead of metal, the fibers splintering to dust in his fingers like it had been allowed to rot for a hundred years. A second-story of the green mile didn’t exist, and even if it did a door out of it wouldn’t lead to the yard.

And there wouldn’t be a fucking bush directly in front it.

Jason hurtled over the bush, tucking into a roll and springing up only for something to slam into him like a freight train. The force of the impact sent him and whatever the hell had tackled him flying to the side.

It took him half a second of wild struggling to see that Batman had tackled him. Something pinged danger in the very back of his brain at the fact that Bruce had taken him down in the first place but he shoved it away. The paranoia was always the thing that tried its hardest to contribute to the poisoning of his relationship with his not-quite-father, and Jason wasn’t even decked out during an Arkham breakout.

“Thank fuck.” he breathed, letting his head fall back against the dead grass, breathless laughter caught in his throat. The water-logged mud was starting to soak the back of his shirt, freezing like slimy ice against his skin. “Let me up, I’ve got gear stashed nearby so I’ll be back soon.”

If Bruce could hear him, he gave no sign. The white lenses of the cowl stared blankly back at him, an angry twist to his mouth. Even when he’d been stealing the tires off the Batmobile the first time they’d met, or every time since then that he’d felt like a fuck-up, Bruce had never looked at him with that amount of unbridled disgust.

“...B?” he said cautiously. It happened so fast that Jason hardly had time to open his mouth and scream. Bruce pulled a knife, pinning him with an arm across his collar. Ten times stronger than he remembered from sparring. Jason screeched bloody murder at him as the bats and birds appeared in a circle around where Batman had him pinned, clawing and thrashing like a wild animal.

Finally putting down the rabid Robin. He had no leverage to get up and Bruce had gotten way stronger. His family howled with rapturous laughter as Bruce plunged a knife into his chest. All teeth and terror as they circled like sharks, smelling the blood gushing from Jason’s chest in the water. The feeling to cross his mind was a sense of deja vu at how gut-wrenchingly familiar the too-wide grins plastered on their faces were as his body went cold.

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe people have been looking for this, y'all are going to make me cry!


	3. The Art Of Keeping Your Head Above Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cat's out of the bag, and Dick, Tim, and Damian reel in the light of how hard their wayward brother has been struggling to keep his head above lazarus-green waters. They do their best to throw him a lifeline, and wait to see if he chucks it back in their faces.

His eyes snapped open with shriek, adrenaline racing through his veins so fast he felt dizzyingly sick, vertigo tilting his perception. Electric lazarus rage boiled over underneath his skin. Angry and raw and dangerous. Threatening to shred him apart from the inside out if he didn’t protect himself.

Jason lunged at the dark shape looming over him, grabbing on and twisting to throw his attacker to the floor. It was a mad scramble for a few seconds, throwing elbows and clawing at each other before they’re holding onto each other’s arms and pushing. Equal strength of Jason trying to pin him down and get his hands around his neck while Dick fought to keep him at bay.

He was trying to kill Dick.

Horrified, Jason froze and let himself be yanked backwards. He layed on his back on the floor, breathing hard and blinking the snarls of vicious green static out of his vision. Dread like ice in his veins, but he needed to concentrate not to make things worse.

Nope, nope, staying still wasn’t working. If anything it made the crawling, venomous feeling worse. He rolled over and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. Distantly, he could register the sound of voices through the choppy ringing in his ears.

Fuck, he needed to keep his head. He slammed the mental doors on acknowledging anything happening around him, ignoring the white noise that was probably people yelling at him and grabbed his cigarettes off the table.

He climbed out the window. Bare feet stung against the cold metal, the freezing wind like a slap in the face. Not cold stone, he reminded himself, pulling a cigarette from the carton and sticking it in the corner of his mouth. He fished the battered lighter from the pocket of his sweats, cupping a hand around the flickering flame as he lit the smoke. Trying to ignore the way his hands trembled like a scared little kid. And how much he felt like one in that moment.

Taking a long drag, the first hit of nicotine soothed the beast some. Poisons mingling together, Keeping each other company as the smoke worked to uncurl the thorned vines from their death grip around his lungs. He relished the warm feeling in his chest for as long as he could before breathing out, watching the smoke twist and curl in the air over the lights of Gotham. Trying not to see flashes of the cowl’s white lenses as his father grinned and killed him.

Gotham lights below him, stretching out like a web over the city. Not Arkham. Open air on the fire escape, frozen wind pulling at his hair. Car horns and road rage below him, a 2am DJ droning on a few floors down from someone’s tinny radio. Not the laughter of his family as they betrayed him. It wasn’t real.

It wasn’t real.

The window below screeched shut, cutting the radio off mid sentence. He didn’t look over when the window to his own apartment slid open, just took another drag and paid attention to the thrum of his own heartbeat. He was alive. He was safe. And he’d really fucked up this time.

Tim crawled out onto the fire escape first, watching him carefully for a reaction. When Jason didn’t immediately try to kill him, Dick followed with Damian on his heels.

None of them said a word for a while. Which was impressive for Dick, as it was obvious that he really wanted to. They just stayed out there. Freezing, but letting themselves meld into the sounds of Gotham. Giving Jason his silence for a while so he could claw himself back together.

A thought dawned on him, and he pulled out his phone, angling so his brothers couldn’t see his password as he typed it in. He opened up the camera app and flipped the perspective. Acutely aware of the bats watching him out of the corners of their eyes.

Jason’s face stared back at him. Even after getting what turned out to be a couple of hours of sleep, he still looked like hell. A shadow of ginger-patched black stubble on his jaw, eye bags that were designer at this point, and eyes that were pretty close to lime fucking green.

He huffed, locking the phone and slipping it back into his pocket. There’s something about looking at the physical effects of the pit that was morbidly fascinating.

Staring at the shock of snow-white roots he was a week late in dyeing over. The fact that if he stood in the bathroom with the door closed and turned off all the lights when the lazarus hidden in his spine reared its ugly head, the green of his eyes glowed. Faint enough that he had to lean over the sink for it to really show, just barely bioluminescent and burning bright. It held the same appeal as horror flicks, as when there was a wreck on the highway and everyone slowed down as they passed by to try and get a peek at it.

Twice in the span of twelve hours. As much as he desperately wanted to write it off, just ignore it and by the miracle of the universe giving him a break it would get the message and fuck right off, it wouldn’t do him any good. It was getting harder and harder to deal with. They’d been on the fire escape for ten miserable minutes and there was still no blue in his eyes.

“I want one of those.”

To his great surprise, the demon brat was the one to break the silence. Jason tilted his head to look at the kid. Damian had learned to joke but he didn’t do it often, and that wasn’t one of them. “Nope.” He breathed twin trails of smoke out of his nose like a sickly dragon.

Damian made a face, wrinkling his nose in the way Jason had noticed meant he was annoyed. “Why not?”

He laughed dryly. “Because I’d rather not end up in a second grave for introducing you to a nicotine addiction.”

All of them were in civilian clothes. It would spell bad news if the sun wasn’t just starting to come up. They’d already patrolled and come around to the Outlaws’ safehouse afterwards to check in. Babs must have read into the vagueness of their calling-out of patrol for the night. Not saying anything would have been worse, but he belatedly wished that had been an option.

“Are we going to talk about what happened, or stand out here playing chicken until we freeze to death?” Tim asked casually, tucking his arms around himself in a feeble attempt at preserving body heat. The tip of his nose had turned red with the cold. “Jason, are you alright if we just get this over with?”

He sighed, taking stock of himself. Lazarus rage had always made him fuzzy. Made making severe decisions easier than it should be. Blurred the edges of the world until they made sense in the twisted ways that he’d needed them to. But now…

Now he was clear headed. Overly sharp in a way that made him feel brittle as a saw blade you could snap to pieces with your fingers. Unstable, but holding together like a badly cracked mirror on the verge of shattering. Safe, unless you ran your hands over the damage and earned glass shards needled into your flesh as punishment.

It made it easier and so, so much harder at the same time. Like the pit madness had fused itself into his bone marrow instead of settling for slogging through his blood. Running deeper than it ever had but with less banging around and shouting until he couldn’t ignore it. He needed to figure out how to dig it out now, wound the beast enough to keep it back when it had decided to evolve new armor.

He ran a hand over his face. Focus on the pins-and-needles feeling in his fingers and his feet. Ground himself in the lights and sounds of Gotham. Not Arkham. It wasn’t Arkham, and the fact that he had to remind himself of that made him feel like he might just be crazy enough to be there, sick to his stomach.

Fuck it, at this point he’d be a pretty massive idiot to think that the three of them hadn’t already figured it out. They’d all been Robins at one point (aside from Damian, who still was), and analytical thinking was ingrained in their heads as naturally as breathing was in their lungs.

“Lazarus rage.” he admitted, voice dull and dead as he’d been in the ground. It was hard to ignore the kicked-puppy look on Dick’s face. “Fades, but it doesn’t really go away. And it’s not as bad as it used to be. Sleeping like shit though, if that isn’t blatantly obvious.”

Jason took another drag of his cigarette, tapping the ashes and sending them fluttering down through the grated floor of the fire escape. Waiting as the three of them processed what he’d said.

Dick worried at his thumbnail with his teeth. An old habit he hadn’t seen for a while. Back when he’d nearly gotten himself blown up, again, to protect Damian, he’d bitten his nails to the quick when he’d visited. He didn’t regret doing it; something deep in Jason’s chest had screamed bloody murder at the thought of the bat brat being the second Robin to die in a fiery explosion. And then back when he’d been Robin, Dick sitting in the cave and biting his nails after another screaming match with Bruce. “So that was a nightmare?”

Jason grit his teeth. He snuffed the cigarette out in the ashtray. The ember had gotten too close to his fingers. “Yeah. For what it’s worth I’m sorry; didn’t recognize you.” he grit out.

“Didn’t… okay.” Dick breathed, “So that means it’s getting pretty bad, isn’t it?”

Jason smirked. The only one that found it funny was the one afflicted, which made it even more hilarious. “You could say that.”

“Any idea why?” Tim demanded, “Because this isn’t good, Jason.”

“You think I don’t already know that?” he hissed, mood darkening like a stormcloud. Faster now that he was losing his control millimeter by millimeter. “I get it, and I’ve got no idea. I can think of ten different reasons it could be and I can’t fix any of them. Comes in waves; this one’s just decided it wants to be a fucking tsunami.”

One by one, they’d ended up sitting. Jason was the first, dangling his legs through the slats of the railing because he’d gotten sick of the sting of standing barefoot on frozen metal. The others probably because they were still having a conversation and none of them were going to let it go that easily.

“What are the reasons?”

“What?”

“What are the reasons?” Damian repeated.

Jason chuckled, and to his surprise Dick did too. Tim looked at them like they were both incredible dumbasses and rolled his eyes, but he was so tired he hardly even noticed.

“Top one might be that I’m still pretty goddamn bitter I died.” he listed. Bitter was pretty accurate. Bitter, angry, resentful, sorry. A lot of shit was wrapped up in the experience, and little of it good.

Damian scoffed, rolling his eyes. “That wasn’t a fucking secret.”

There was a beat of disbelief before Jason howled with laughter. The kind that he’d gotten with his friends and doubted he’d ever get with his family again; that puts your sides in stitches and makes it hard to breathe. He let himself fall back to lay on the floor, cackling like a hyena as Tim stared at Damian in unconcealed horror. Dick swatted at Jason’s shoulder despite the fact that he was snickering.

“Whatever you do, don’t swear in front of your dad.” Jason begged between laughs, “Seriously.”

“Or in front of Alfred.” Dick adds quickly, shoving at Jason one last time before offering him a hand and pulling him upright.

Jason shook his head, grinning as he raked his hair back with fingers. It was greasy against his skin, making him regret that he hadn’t showered yesterday. “Oh man, Bruce would be pissed but Alfred would be SO disappointed in us.”

“So much worse.” Dick groaned. “The Alfred look of disappointment. He should patent it.”

Damian was still staring at him, stuck on the point that he’d made. Man, the kid’s intensity was both admirable and freaked him out, but having known Talia Al Ghul it hadn’t surprised him in the least.

“I never said any of them were secrets.” he clarified. Damian, taking it as an acceptable answer, made an affirmative noise in his throat and kept staring. Waiting for him to go on. If being a vigilante didn’t work out (and they all knew that it would) then the kid had a future in interrogation.

“I guess that I’m still pissed that I died and nothing happened.” he admitted, rushing to finish when Tim and Dick opened their mouths in unison to interject. “And don’t give me that horseshit; I know people grieved for me but it isn’t possible not to be incredibly fucking angry that the Joker got to keep breathing when I didn’t. Life isn’t fair, but that’s just overkill.”

Jason was aware that he’d really gotten going on this one, but he didn’t feel the need to stop himself. They’d asked.

“-and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here. I burnt, and I crawled out of the ashes and made myself a life; I’m still an Outlaw but I’m not even doing it anymore. It was fast-paced, and the fact that we were in Poland one day and Outer Space the next makes staying in the same place for months like this feel wrong... but I don’t wanna just disappear.”

Tim’s brow furrowed. He looked taken aback, like it was some cosmic revelation that Jason didn’t want to permanently abandon Gotham. “You don’t?” he asked. His tone was so careful that Jason almost felt bad. “Honestly, I thought it was a defending your territory thing.”

“That was part of it. Crime Alley is the Red Hood’s.” he explained. Thinking about the rivers of blood he’d spilled to keep it. “I wear the mantle. If I abandoned Crime Alley, then it makes the Red Hood look weak. Like there aren't any consequences to messing with my shit, and I’d lose all the ground I gained. Would fuck over a lot of people, too. Anyone that was under my protection, and anyone that had ever even said they didn’t hate the Red Hood would be in for it.”

“Also wanted to be around to kill the Joker.” he amended. “Because see above complaints; I’m bitter and pissed off, and he’s going down.”

He sighed, wiggling his toes over the freefall between the fire escape and the dirty street below. “And… you’re not the worst.” he muttered. Perfect. Summed it all up, and if he got any more mushy on the topic he was going to be sick off the edge of their perch. Dick pulled a cheshire grin, throwing an arm around Jason’s stiff shoulders and squeezing in a side-hug.

“Awwwwww, Tin Man has a heart!” he cooed. Tim snorted and Jason traded punching Dick in the throat to initiate a struggle to put him in a headlock and screwing up his hair. It had been a grave mistake on Grayson’s part to whine to Jay about how annoying it was to fix it after it got messed up on patrol. There was a minute of sibling-fighting and squawking at each other before someone whistled. They froze mid movement, blinking at a very unimpressed looking Tim.

“Hey, Wrestlemania. Task at hand?” he pointed out. They seperated, Jason fixing his stolen jacket from where Dick had yanked the hood over his head and pulled the strings in retaliation for his ruined hair.

“You’re right; those two can’t really be fixed.” Tim admitted. Jason hadn’t noticed when, but at some point the replacement had picked up the tiny potted succulent that lived on the fire escape. He was holding it like someone holds a warm mug when they’re cold, practically cuddling with the plant.

It struck him that they’d stayed in the same safehouse long enough to adopt a damn plant. Not safe. They were getting too lax. He’d bring up moving later, when he actually knew where Roy was. The redhead was probably out somewhere; he would have stopped Dick from trying to wake him up. The Outlaw strategy for a Jason nightmare was to throw pillows (and an orange, once) at him until he snapped out of it.

“Keep going.” Damian urged, caught somewhere between a request and a demand. Yeah, he was an Al Ghul all right, but there was definetly some Wayne sass thrown in there.

Jason scowled at him. He’d hit his limit of brotherly bonding and was acutely aware of it. Tim sniffed against the cold and Jason had to try hard not to flinch at the noise. His nerves were frayed to the raw edge. “Hold on a sec.”

Jason leaned back, reaching a hand behind him until his fingers caught the tin box next to the ashtray. The grated metal dug uncomfortably into his back but he ignored it in favor of dragging the box over to him. Careful not to shake it because he wasn’t totally sure if Roy had squirreled away bits and pieces of a project in there, and the guy had an affinity for cobbling together impressive explosives.

He sat up and unlatched the top. He was getting good at ignoring things, especially the three breathing down his neck. The box idea had been Kori’s after they kept leaving bits of brain games out there. He hated to admit what a good one it had been; there had been more than one occasion where he’d fished a metal brain teaser puzzle out of the ashtray. The thought had been that they wouldn’t fall through the grate if they were in there, but it was still pretty stupid.

Jay delicately shifted a tangle of wires and circuit aside. Almost without thinking about it, he passed the box along to his left after picking out the community Rubix’s cube for himself. Dick held onto it for a second, smirking at him before grabbing a wooden puzzle cube. Roy was still pissed that Jason wouldn’t tell him how he solved it. It had taken seven hours; there was no way he was surrendering that information for less than a cooler puzzle.

Tim and Damian both selected metal tangle toys before shoving the box behind them. None of them talked about what had just happened, just moved on while Jason took the chance to make his brain and his hands channel the relentless energy itching holes through his skin like cheesecloth.

“So you just, what, deal with it?” Dick asked. His legs swung back and forth as he fiddled with the wooden puzzle. It was obvious from his tone that he wasn’t totally serious, but Jason just shrugged.

“Yeah, kinda.” he admitted.

“Father might-”

“Hell no.”

“Todd-”

“No Bruce.” he insisted, giving an angry twist to the plastic cube, “Let’s face it, B would take it like I’m an egg timer set for a blood-soaked meltdown. Last thing I need is for him to try and smother me, poke around in my skull, or put me in a shoebox.”

“I’m going to pretend that last bit made sense.” Tim snarked, dropping his finished tangle toy back in the box. Yeah, he should have figured that Drake would solve it first. “But I get your point. I think we all know that Bruce does what HE thinks is best.”

They all grumbled in agreement. Even Damian conceded to the fact that Bruce had a streak for thinking he knew better, and struggled when ideas clashed. The bat brat didn’t suggest his mom. He’d probably figured out that Talia hadn’t kept much back about the Lazarus Pit from Jason; hadn’t had much of a reason to after they’d hucked him in there.

He’d come out foaming at the mouth, but worked down to chomping at the bit for vengeance and the chance to spill blood. Explained why the boiling pool of toxic-green shit decided to give him a reverse skunk stripe in his bangs and an even worse attitude.

Oh shit… they didn’t know. “The later you wait to throw a corpse in the pit, the worse they come out.” he said shortly. Damian blinked, probably already privy to the information and assuming that everybody in the row was. Dick and Tim on the other hand, chewed on it.

“And you were pretty late.” Drake concluded. He plunked the solved puzzle toy back in the box. Figures the brainiac-era Robin would be the first to solve that stupid thing. Jason mentally logged his time to beat it later.

“Well, I was in the dirt for a year ‘till I woke up and crawled out, so yeah.” he rasped. Why was it still so fucking hard to talk about his grave when it wasn’t jokes? Like the words wanted to claw back down his throat and hide in his lungs.

“I was still sorta roadkill at that point. Take enough swings upstairs and functions don’t work like they should; it sorted the brain damage out. Guess you could say I was late, though, cause I was… I really was dead down there.” he confirmed.

They didn’t fight him on it. No ‘maybe you were just dormant’ arguments, even though Tim desperately wanted to try and rationalize it. Likely because they didn’t want to hear out loud exactly why he knew he’d truly been dead when he’d spent a year in a casket.

Jason remembered dying. Vividly, painted in technicolor on the inside canvas of his skull. The pain of the injuries collected over the time of his torture, the searing heat of the blast, blood drying sticky on his face. Red numbers ticking down, down, down, until he was dead like a twisted New Year’s countdown clock. The regret. He’d need 20 years and a liquor store’s worth of booze to ever talk that shit out.

Dick quirked his mouth, not biting his nails anymore. Focusing the energy instead on the wooden puzzle in his hands. It was a damn good coping mechanism. “So damage control.”

“How many times do I have to say that I don’t need your help?”

“You haven’t said it at all.” Tim pointed out flatly.

Jason huffed, “Then take it as the first and last!”

Dick elbowed him in the side. For once, not resorting to the kicked-puppy look or spite. “Yeah, but even if you don’t need it, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t come in handy.”

“Grayson’s correct.” Damian affirmed, as if that was just the deciding factor of the universe. Bat brat gave the green light guys, time to move forward on operation ‘whack the wasps’ nest of lazarus rage with a stick’.

“See?” Dick insisted. Good grief, why exactly had Bruce adopted all of them again? They were such an annoying terror as a unit (and yeah, Jason included himself in that, he’d be a hypocrite if he didn’t) that trying to figure it out was quite the trip.

“Fine. You wanna help? If I get bad bad, leave me alone.”

Tim scoffed, giving him a look that was so clearly an ‘are you serious’ dripping with disappointment.

“Don’t give me that look. I tried to kill all of you.” Jason reminded sharply. Damian and Tim still looked ready to argue, but Dick shifted. Something in him resigned itself to the reality of the situation. He understood; the big brother/ protector mentality coming out to play. Good. Jason needed him to be the smart one right now. “If I get that bad again, don’t engage. Keep Bruce away from me if you can. Let it burn out.” he instructed.

“And if it doesn’t?” Tim demanded. Honestly, he didn’t know what Drake wanted him to say. From the time he’d spent skirting the outside of the Bat family, he’d figured exactly how much of a driven person he was. He needed answers to work with, and if he didn’t have any, he’d work like a dog to find them. Part of the reason he was such a caffeine junkie.

He spun the top of the cube, sliding the last blocks into place with a click. He shrugged, gesturing with the solved puzzle. “Your call.”

The trio of birds stared at him. Dick and Tim outright gawking while Damian was more reserved. Instead, giving a slight dip of his chin as a nod and solving his own puzzle with one final twist. They knew what it was but the kid was the only one to take it at face value.

It was a level of trust he hadn’t allowed to them. Only to Roy and Kori, and to an extent Alfred. Jason was well aware that he was a paranoid person, and his dealings with the three of them hadn’t escaped it. His heartbeat thrummed with anxiety at the prospect but it was the right decision and he wasn’t stupid enough to ignore it.

“Next order of business... how the fuck did you get in my apartment?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All aboard the angst train!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason struggles, and makes a decision in an effort to protect himself that he knows is going to come back to haunt him later. He also gets a tan.
> 
> (Hey all! There was kind of a scary health situation with my dad (thankfully not covid, but it ended up with the ambulance at our house) and a lot of college stuff for next semester, so I had to back away from a03 for a month. Fic updating resumes!

It gets worse. Doesn't use the word deteriorating, because all it makes him think of is cancer and needles on counter tops.

He’s masking it as well as he can, but after a few odd looks from Bruce and the girls when he stares into corners for just a second too long to be normal, he goes back to avoiding the manor. Lets his phone ring out. Leaves his comm in, because he's not enough of a jackass to not answer if there's an emergency, but never joins the channel that links them.

Maybe not his smoothest move to date, but it feels like his options are starting to slip through his fingers. He’s grasping at straws and he knows it, hates it, but there’s no other option that to work with what he’s got. It gets hard to look at anyone in the manor without seeing the Joker-grins of his nightmares.

Seeing your 15 year old self milling around is an immensely creepy experience. His teachers at Gotham Academy had always praised his creativity to Bruce right before they complained about him hiding a book under the desk to read during classes, but the detail of his hallucinations was almost impressive.

Even the bits that he’d forgotten, like the faintly discolored row of stitches a few inches up from the bottom hem of his cape. He still liked that color, more wilted sunflower than lemon yellow.

He’d snagged the fabric on a fence during a chase and in the moment he’d just grabbed hold and yanked without thinking, not wanting to be the one to slow them down. Jason had stitched it back to health when he was supposed to be asleep, blanket thrown over his head and a mini flashlight held between his teeth as he threaded the needle through the cloth in tiny, careful stitches Catherine had taught him. He’d been Robin for a while at that point, but still didn’t want to bother Alfred with fixing the outfit if he thought he could do it himself. Didn’t want it to be counted as something he did wrong.

Robin Jason was a flurry of activity. He’d remembered being hyperactive as a kid, still was, but the specter loved to chatter away like the bird he was named for at somebody just beyond Jay’s vision. Or maybe his brain just hadn’t invented the other party yet. Not quite sure which one was worse.

He talked, or he fussed with a batarang (Bruce had always scolded him for it, but playing with knives was a pastime that seemed to run in the family), or he stood there with slumped shoulders for hours, his eyes doing a nearly perfect imitation of a dead fish. Dripping red that never pooled, posture like a marionette heavy on its strings.

Or he screamed. Jason nearly shot himself in the foot on patrol when the voice of little 15 year old Robin-him popped up behind him and shrieked like a banshee directly in his ear. He hadn’t seen him all night, just a glimpse of a bloodied teenager out of the corner of his eye every one in a while. Robin on the fire escape. Robin walking with a trio of people on the street. Robin leaping from one roof to the next, a wild grin plastered across his face because Robin made him magic.

The two pistols at his hips were loaded with rubber bullets, but there were live ammo clips stashed in his pockets. He was willing to compromise. To try, and good God had he been trying. Be merciful when he had the opportunity. But he wasn’t going to go back in the ground over it, or let anyone he cared about take the trip if he could stop it.

After stopping a mugging in progress in which the mugger (a guy that he fucking recognized) had beaten a college kid black, blue, and crimson, the loaded baretta he kept hidden on the inside of his jacket was begging to be used. Whispering in his ears to ‘take care of it like old times, Jay. You’ve already left him for the cops twice, and everybody knows it’s three strikes and you’re out’. Hissing at him like a pissed-off cobra as he zip-ties the mugger up and watches from some scaffolding across the street as the cops collect and take him away, static in his fingers and bubbling green to the marrow of his bones.

When he reverts to keeping out of the manor and the cave, his eyes start going green more often, and for longer. Now he can pick out the signs before it happens. The way his ribs feel like branches on a tree in his chest; independent of his flesh but still fused to the muscle. The prickly crawl across his skin. The empty, yawning pit opening up in his chest that Jay never figured out the bottom of.

Mercifully, his younger self is gone for now. It’s all he wanted; just a few hours of peace in which the first thing he’d done was throw off his helmet, bury his head in a pillow, and let out a frustrated scream that had been clawing at the inside of his chest for days.

Jason’s gotten in the habit of looking for him in the corners of rooms. In empty chairs and on top of counters, watching with his head cocked like a puppy. Thankful for a temporary truce, or whatever the hell the absence was, he’s curled up at one end of the couch with Roy at the other. Each with a separate blanket for their freezing toes. Neither of them share.

He doesn’t know exactly what possessed him to blurt out, smack in the middle of a British Bake Off rerun, that he was thinking about going. But the second the words are out of his mouth he realizes how long they’ve been sitting in his brain.

Roy didn’t miss a beat. He paused the TV, tucking his legs up and looping his arms around them, the remote balanced precariously on his knees. When Jason didn’t say anything further, he flailed a hand in a gesture for him to go on.

“How long have we been in the apartment?”

Jason could see the realization strike Roy clear on his face. He frowned. Paul Hollywood’s face stared back at them from the TV. “Around six months.”

“Six months.” he repeated. As much as Jason liked the place, with its brick accent walls and the one broken cabinet they always had to fix, it wasn’t safe. And it absolutely wasn’t fucking smart. They’d beaten out their previous safehouse record by two months and hadn’t been any more careful about it.

The only reason they were still living there were the strings attached. The faint stains around the bathroom sink from when they’d started dyeing the white streak in his bangs back to black. The score in the drywall from where Roy had tried to teach him to juggle knives and he’d lost one to the wall. The memories of watching Ink Masters with Dick on their terrible couch. Too many strings tying them to the place, and it would be the noose to hang them.

Roy sighed, scanning the apartment for a moment as if he’s trying to commit it to memory. “Yeah… we gotta go. Still living together?” he asks.

“If you want to, I’m game.”

“Alright.” he chucked the remote across the room onto the recliner so neither of them would be tempted to ignore the problem in favor of the black hole that was reality tv. “There’s the one in the warehouse district that hasn’t been used. I’d say try downtown but we never really start patrol there. Or…” he trailed off, trying to see where Jay would take it.

“We get out of Gotham. At least for a little while.” Jason finished.

There was a beat of silence as they stared at each other. “And go where?”

Jay shrugged, like he hadn’t already mulled it over in depth before even thinking about bringing it up. Made psuedo-plans in case shit went sideways and they bolted. “I dunno; up and down the coast, trace Gotham drugs to the suppliers and pay them all a visit, see what Kori’s up to, maybe hang around Star City for a while, Disney World; I don’t really give a shit, to be honest..”

At the mention of Green Arrow’s territory, Roy balked slightly. “Why Star City?”

“If you’re not cool with it, then we don’t have to.” he amended. “But it would be a hell of a lot easier to avoid Oliver than the bats; there’s only one of him.”

Roy gnawed at his lip, sinking down and spreading out limbs akimbo on the couch like he was melting. His icy foot poked Jason in the calf and he kicked him in retaliation.

“I’m not sticking around if we run into him.” Roy warned. Guarded, and Jason couldn’t verbalize the level to which he understood. “Good on you for reconnecting a little, but I’m not up for a family reunion.”

“Yeah.. not the biggest fan of your old man either; I get it.” Oh wow could he sympathize with that. Existing around Bruce was still difficult for him, and it had stopped getting any easier. Plateaued into stilted conversations and awkward eye contact. Besides, he wouldn’t be the only one of the family to have a reason to get out of Gotham for a while.

The Justice League. The Titans. Dick’s gig in Bludhaven as a cop and patrolling over there as Nightwing. Tim’s work in Wayne Industries. Stephanie going to College and Damian going to school. Young Justice. Everyone else had something that allowed them to hit pause on the family until they could handle it again. The Outlaws had been calling his name for a while now, and hey, who the fuck was he to ignore it?

“They’re gonna dig their heels in if they think you’re trying to book.” Roy pointed out, “Especially if you’re not giving them a time when you’ll come back. And four of them know that it’s getting worse, and that number is only if they’ve kept their mouths shut.”

“And if we leave, they’re going to let everyone else in on it.” Jason groans, scrubbing a hand over his face. He belatedly realizes he needs to shave. It was a bit of a clusterfuck disaster, but hey, at least they were kind of sleeping better. Two insomniacs living together was a classic ‘misery loves company’ scenario, but Jason’s came with the lovely little sprinkling of lazarus rage.

But he was adapting now. Kind of. A good and a bad thing depending on what aspect you were looking at. Being haunted by himself was definetly one of the shittier ones.

“We could just… not say anything. Until after a couple hours after we’re gone.”

“Jay. That sucks.”

“Yeah, well I’m not seein’ any better options here. We wouldn’t have to search all our shit for bugs or trackers, and I’m not saying to just drop off the face of the earth. We’d be giving ourselves a couple hours to get out of dodge so they can’t chase us if they decide they want to. It’s a couple months at best, and I never said that I was staying in Gotham forever.”

Roy raised a hand up and automatically Jason moves to high-five him. “Hurray for running away from our problems.”

“Oh fuck you, that’s entrapment.”

Roy smirked, a coyote grin. He rolled himself to his feet, blanket draped around him like a blanket poncho as he embarked on his mission to retrieve the remote he’d chucked across the room. “What’re you, a lawyer? Sue me.” he snarked. He tossed the remote to Jason over his shoulder. It was almost annoying how accurate his aim was even with his back turned.

“Pretty sure you have to legally be alive to take someone to court.”

Roy shuffled back and turned on his heel, letting himself fall back into the couch with a huff. “Whatever. One of us should call Kori before patrol to let her know. Goddamn, I miss her.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Jason yawned as British Bake Off resumed on screen. He couldn’t pay attention to it but feigned as much. Too busy thinking.

There was another massive upside to getting out of Gotham for a while; he’d missed having Kori at his back. She was one badass lady, and one of the people that he trusted most in this world. Well, in any world.

Getting out of Gotham was protecting himself. Something in the bubbling pit of lime green sickness the pit had given him thrived, taken to the gritty metropolis like a meth gator to a Florida sewer. It was picking up a shield and defending for a while instead of clashing blades until one of them snapped, and hoping it wasn’t his. Fighting smarter, not harder.

Gotham ran thick in his blood. Infused deep in the marrow growing up in a tiny apartment in the worst part of town. Refined into something sharp and mean enough to wound as an orphaned kid on the streets, fighting and stealing and hustling out of a primal need to survive and keep himself going. Just another night, just another week, just another brutal winter. Taking it as far as to steal the tires off the goddamn batmobile in the continual effort not to starve or freeze to death.

It’s what he did, hardwired into his brain so deeply even a crowbar and a death certificate couldn’t knock it out. Jason Todd made it through. Sometimes a little battered, once in a coffin, but he put his head down and fought like a bat out of hell until he came out on the other side. Didn’t see anything else to do. He was just too goddamn stubborn to give up.

Using the shards of Gotham stuck in his soul didn’t mean he was required to make the city his prison. Didn’t mean that he had to become anyone but himself. Didn’t mean he had to give up the Outlaws. He didn’t think he could go back to the life he’d lived once upon a time if he tried. The part of Jason’s heart that had well and truly died when his body did recoiled at the prospect. There was no stepping back into the shoes he’d outgrown, just lace up his boots and keep going.

Always had to keep going.

\-- -- -- -- --

The apartment was empty. It wasn’t the barren kind of empty. Jason and Roy’s couch was still there. There was still a bed in the bedroom and a table in the kitchen, but enough pieces were missing to show that both of them were gone.

Just enough clothes taken out of the closet. No gear or weapons to be seen. The killing blow was that Jason’s Rubix’s cube was gone.

Dick didn’t know what he was feeling. A muddled mess that he had to pick apart emotion by emotion.

Fear topped the charts. That Jay had decided to back out and call it quits. He’d come back into the family, but only as the shadow on the outskirts. Interacting when he felt like he needed to. When he was obligated. There, but just barely.

Close behind fear was how pissed off he was.

He kicked an empty box across the floor, denting the cardboard with his shoe. It doesn’t help.

Tim stalked out of the bedroom, a knowing look on his face. “He bolted.” his brother announces.

“I can see that.” he growled. Tim didn’t rise to the bait, starting to meticulously go through the apartment in search of clues that Jason and Roy wouldn’t have left behind. But out of anyone, Tim would have the best chance at finding unintentional ones. Sure, all of them were trained by the world’s greatest detective, but even considering that Tim’s skills were ridiculous.

They split up, each separately going through the place with a fine-toothed comb and finding absolutely nothing. The terror twins had thought ahead. Scrubbed anything that would incriminate their intentions from the apartment before they’d cut and run.

“Nothing.” Tim sighed, handing over the tin box full of random fidget objects over to Dick. Jason had taken his Rubix cube, not surprising considering how heavily he’d leaned on it as a coping mechanism the last time they’d talked in person. It seemed like they’d taken one or two other things out, but there were so many that he couldn’t figure out which ones.

Jay had always felt with his whole self, and he went through emotions at a volume louder than most other people on the planet. Even though Jason’s years as a Robin had been in the thick of Dick’s serious problems with Bruce, and as a result Dick had been largely absent from the manor, it hadn’t been hard to pick it up. The scrawny, foul-mouthed street kid with a smoking habit that would make the 1960’s think about quitting, a cracking wit, and one hell of a smart mouth. There had never been any guessing if Jason was angry; he’d make sure to let you know. Loudly, and more often than not cursing his heart out.

If keeping his hands busy helped Jay to work through things without flipping his lid and freaking out, Dick would force Bruce to invest in whatever company had invented the multicolored piece of plastic.

Dick hadn’t expected to feel so completely blindsided. Jason had flown the coop, and it really shouldn’t have shocked him as much as it did. Shouldn’t have felt so bad. But he’d gotten his hopes up for the chance to bring his little brother back into the fold, and now he didn’t know if he was even going to come back.

Looking back at the heart-to-heart on the fire escape, it was riddled with warnings and red flags, and Dick wants to go back in time and grab himself by the shoulder and yell in his own stupid face. Had he just not wanted to see it?

The amount he’d opened up, even with the fact that he’d been almost forced to after backing himself into a corner. Jason didn’t just do that.

Dick had suspected that Jay had nightmares, anyone that had gone through what he had would, but having your lazarus-green eyed little brother trying to strangle you with his bare hands was another thing. Jay had slept mostly okay after he’d gotten himself injured shielding Damian, but he’d also been on a mountain of drugs and painkillers post-surgery. That had been the knockout sleep of a body desperately trying to heal itself, not normal rest.

If he got bad, bad, leave him alone. It had set of alarm bells in Dick’s head the second Jason had said it, but he’d read into it the wrong way. It wasn’t ‘don’t contact me’, or ‘don’t drop in when I’m working’; now it had become painfully clear that it was an ‘if you know what’s good for you, don’t come after me’ in disguise. Not even a good disguise, and he’d completely missed it.

God dammit, Jason.

\-- -- -- -- --

Heat rests on the surface of his body as the Arizona sun beats down harshly on his skin. They’ve been in there for maybe a week, and he’d already worked up the start of a pretty decent tan. Jason had never been totally sure of his heritage, but the italian he was pretty sure was in there somewhere seemed to be beating out the scottish paleness. Gotham gloom hadn’t given him much of an opportunity to tan, but Arizona had really run with it.

And gifted Roy a desperate need for wide-brim hats, sunglasses, and enough sunscreen to drown someone in. Poor red-headed idiot. He’d gotten too used to Gotham’s shit weather combined with a nocturnal schedule and forgotten what the sun looked like. Jason couldn’t blame him. So had he.

He wiggled his toes in the sand, feeling the light, warm pressure as his feet sunk incrementally into the dune he was standing on. His face tipped skyward as he gave himself a moment to take it in. Feeling the grit of the sand and the dry heat of the blazing sun baking his skin.

“Hey, king of the hill! You coming, or am I leaving your ass in the desert?” Roy shouted. Jay turned his head, bringing up a hand to shield his eyes and squinting through the glaring sunshine. The archer was perched on the hood of the truck. Something about his posture made him look like a giant, mildly sunburnt vulture.

“In a second!” he yelled back. He took one last look at the dunes. Nothing makes you feel so small yet so big at the same time more than an unending landscape. Hills of pale sand as far as the eye could see, only a few scraggly branch things and the sun-bleached road to break up the continuous desaturated yellow. There would be plenty of time to wax poetic about sand later; they had shit to do.

Artemis, Bunker, and Bizarro were still off planet. Had been for months, but they were meeting up with Kori in New Mexico tomorrow. A lot of weird magic shit had been going down. A lot of the weapons running through Gotham were coming from there too. Better to kill the heart than keep cutting off the limbs and watching them grow back.

Leaving his territory to the bats freaked him out. Partially because, like Tim had so eloquently called him out on, it was his. Roy hadn’t claimed the city, but Jason suspected he’d carved out a place in his heart for it as well.

Also because, even though crime happened all over Gotham, it was particularly violent in his neck of the woods. And yeah, he knew that they knew, but he’d formed attachments, however tenuous and shaky they may be. Sue him.

Jason enjoyed the sunshine for a few more moments before heading back towards the road. The heat trapped in the sand would probably have burned the bottoms of his feet if they hadn’t calloused from running around in his boots every night and never wearing socks in the apartment.

He walked-slid the rest of the way down the dune, jogging the last few feet to the truck. Roy hopped off, tossing him the thin t-shirt he’d abandoned when they’d pulled over for a break. Jay pulled it over his head. It was a pajama shirt; faded grey with Wonder Woman’s emblem across the front of it, worn enough to be downy soft.

It had always been a bit of a joke in the vigilante community for some of them to wear each other’s unofficial merch. Bruce, of course, found it super annoying, which had only fueled the fire like a splash of gasoline every time he rolled his eyes.

He’d acquired a half the justice league in t-shirts before he’d died, a couple of them by stealing them from Dick’s closet. All of them hidden from Bruce unless he was physically wearing them because he knew B would try to make them ‘mysteriously disappear’.

He was tempted to go behind the wheel without any shoes on, Roy spoiling his fun by playfully chucking a pair of slides at his head. Jason caught them before they whacked him in the temple. “Your turn to drive.”

Jason smirked, letting himself in the driver’s side door and laying it on thick. “Oh man, thanks for the reminder. I totally forgot in the five minutes since we’ve been in the fucking car.”

Roy rolled his eyes, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “Hilarious; keep your day job.”

“Don’t have one.” He pulled back onto the road, and felt something tiny and thornless uncurl in his chest, right where his heart sat. A different sensation than rotted pit of lazarus rage. More like a baby flower bloom.

Huh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going back to my days of living in a desert for this one. Not bad, until its the middle of summer and into the 120's. It's true folks, you can cook an egg on the sidewalk but I wouldn't recommend eating it.


	5. What, No Postcard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He comes back. He'd always intended to when he left. Maybe not after three months, but he comes back all the same.

Breaking into Dick’s apartment is easy. Easy enough that he’s probably going to go back and bolster the place; half the traps are already sprung and haven’t been reset. Being careful doesn’t really matter at the moment, the whole point is to visit. Any alarms he trips would just notify Dick that Jay was in his house.

What he doesn’t expect is for Duke to be standing in the middle of Dick’s apartment. Bent to lean on the counter on his elbows, a pair of chopsticks held in his hand poised over a takeout box of what looked like old chow-mein. He looks up, stares at Jason in the doorway with a backpack for a moment, and promptly goes back to casually eating the leftovers that Jay’s pretty positive were stolen from Dick’s fridge.

That would explain the sprung traps. Probably waiting until Dick came back to make sure he didn’t reset them incorrectly and accidentally electrocute any neighbors that came knocking. Traps were fiddly; everyone set theirs differently. Disarming them when they never had to be used again was easy, when they had to be completely intact it got tricky.

Deciding to just go with it, Jason drops his bag and motorcycle helmet by the door with a thud and collapses onto the couch. There’s a bruise on his shoulder from a hard hit and he’s careful to avoid agitating the aching limb. Driving cross-country didn’t help.

He’d met the other vigilante a few times. Duke was a member of Bruce’s brood, so they’d seen each other around the manor a few times but only in glances and stilted conversation. Jason had helped out Stephanie with him once during a string of vicious robberies in Burnside that were conducted simultaneously. Less great, Red Hood and Signal had scrapped before. The details of that were kind of shaky in Jason’s memories. Vaguely, he remembered headbutting him at some point.

“Dude, you are in so much trouble.” Duke informed him. He stabbed a hunk of orange chicken with one of the chopsticks and popped it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully as he stared at Jason.

“Thank you, oh wise one. Could never have figured that one out myself.” he grumbled, jerking his good arm to elicit a sharp crack.

Duke snorts. Jason expects him to contact the bats. At the very least, call Dick to inform him that his brother that had gone AWOL for two months had shown up on his doorstep and was close to falling asleep on his couch. He doesn’t. He just stays in the kitchen eating his liberated takeout. Quickly climbing his list of favorites.

Jason shuffled to let his feet hang over the arm of the couch. He was so tired that he couldn’t remember if Dick had a rule about shoes in his apartment or not, but he could imagine that Grayson wouldn’t be thrilled with Jason’s possibly muddy sneakers on his furniture.

He’s so tired he decides that, fuck it, Dick’s couch is his new bed. Jay’s right on the verge of sleep when Duke pipes up again.

He hears the footsteps as Duke walked around the counter, standing at the head of the couch.

“You alright?”

Jason cracks an eye. Duke’s doing his best to keep looking casual, but he’s too good at reading people for it to work. Brown eyes spark with faint hints of worry. Dick, Tim, and Damian had blabbed. “M fine.” he assures him, twisting from his side to his back to look him in the face, “You visiting or something?”

“Yeah. Are you?”

Jay shrugged. “Guess so.” He could feel the pull in his injured shoulder when it moved. If he didn’t ice it soon, it was gonna be much worse of a pain later. He dragged himself up and tried not to mourn how fucking comfortable he’d gotten in his three minutes of almost sleeping.

Jason grabbed an ice pack from Dick’s freezer and pressed it over the front of his shoulder near the end of his collarbone.

Duke raises an eyebrow at him. “Thought you said you were fine.”

“I am.” he insisted, reclaiming his spot on the couch toeing off his shoes and cramming himself into the corner.

He snorts, dropping onto a stuffed chair on the other side. “If you say so. Dick should be back around 7, if you’re not gonna flee the country until then.”

Jason doesn’t respond for a minute. It’s bait and he knows it. Dick was going to be mad, maybe mad enough to not want to talk to him, but he hadn’t left Gotham with the intention of avoiding his family for the rest of his life. But the half-truth rubs him the wrong way.

“Listen, I’m not a bat, so you can fuck right off with the judgement. Gotham isn’t my only obligation.” he said, more severe than he meant it to come out. Duke continued to look unimpressed.

At that exact very inopportune moment, the jingle of keys sounded through the door. Jason and Duke shared a quick look before the other vigilante got up, abandoning Jay in favor of going back to his dinner as Dick walked through the door. What the fuck happened to ‘no man left behind’?

“Uh, hi.”

Wow. Good one, Jason. Someone should give you a medal for those shining social skills.

Dick quickly turned and shut the door behind him, engaging the deadbolt. Something about the situation gave Jay the feeling of being a middle schooler about to get detention.

Dick stalked over. He’d been living the life longer than Jason, so when he wanted his expression to be unreadable it damn well was. Nothing came across in his face aside from a stony indifference. He stopped in front of the couch and offered him a hand up. Scratch that, not an offer.

God, it would be so much easier to just fight with him. Get it over with; let Dick scream at him for a while until he felt better and then move on. But he knew dropping everything and leaving had hurt, so he took the hand and stood.

Dick moved slowly, like Jason was a feral raccoon he was trying not to spook, wrapping his arms around his back and pulling him into a hug. He rested his chin on Jay’s shoulder with a huff. Stunned, Jason stayed stock-still for a moment before putting his arms around his brother and hugging him back.

Dick broke it off, holding Jason at an arm’s length. “You’re a giant idiot, you know that?”

He sighed, tipping his head back. “Yeeaahhhhh. You wouldn’t be the first to say that.”

Dick slugged him in the shoulder. Thankfully not the bad one, but it bordered on the line of painful. “And you,” he pointed a finger accusingly at Duke, “Stop raiding my fridge like a rat; I will literally buy you food!”

Duke grinned, holding up his hands in mock surrender. He’d wolfed the rest of it down when Dick had started dealing with Jason.

Deeming one brother sufficiently chastised, he turned back to Jason. Yeah, he’d assumed he wouldn’t get off that easily.

“How are you doing?” he demanded. Blue eyes scrutinized every inch of him like it was going to tell him something. Lingered for too long on his eyes, and narrowed at the ice pack slowly melting on the couch. He was getting tired of people asking him that.

“Better.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking stupid.”

“You already said that.”

“Jason I swear to god-” Dick cut himself off, taking a deep breath through his nose and letting it out. “Duke, can we have a minute?”

His eyes flicked between Jason and Dick for a moment before silently making his way to go stand out in the hall. Kind of overkill, in his opinion, until he realized you’d be able to hear yelling from the bedroom. And Duke was expecting them to do at least a little screaming at each other.

“Look, before you say anything… I texted. And I called. I tried, Dick.” he defended, “And you of all people knows what it feels like when it starts to feel suffocating.”

“That doesn’t mean you disappear!” he shouted. Not 0-100 but definetly around a 30-70. Dick was angry, blue eyes flashing with ice and a red flush tinting the tips of his ears. “Think about it for a second! You were getting worse, and all of a sudden you just pull back and pack up your apartment; what are we all supposed to think?”

“That you aren’t the only one with a side gig, and I’m not a fucking prisoner!” he snapped. Dick recoiled like Jason had hit him, and the guilt felt almost worse, but he needed to explain. The fact that he’d just driven across the country almost nonstop wasn’t helping his eternally-thin patience. “You’ve got a day job and Bludhaven, Bruce has being Bruce Wayne and the Justice League, Damian and Stephanie have school, Tim’s got the Titans, school, Wayne Industries, and you’ve both got Young Justice! Do I need to go on?”

“Jason-”

“I can’t fucking do this if it means being trapped; I’m not giving up the Outlaws.” he defended fiercly, practically snarling at him.

“I KNOW!” Dick shouted. Jason’s mouth clicked shut, startled. He’d been 15 the last time he’d really seen Dick’s temper in full force. It must have shown on his face, because he took a step backwards away from Jason.

“I know.” he repeated, calmer even if it was incredibly forced. “I get it. You know how much I get it. But that doesn’t mean it’s cool to houdini out. Just…-”

“Jus talk to us Jay. No one’s going to stop you from going if you need to, if that’s what you were thinking. But you don’t understand how terrifying that was. You don’t get that the first thing Bruce and I did was double check that the Joker was still in Arkham, and then go there anyway to make sure. And then you didn’t call for two days! You can’t tell me you seriously think that I’m angry at you for leaving instead of at the shitty way you did it.” he said lowly.

Jason kept his mouth shut, jaw clenched so hard his teeth hurt. Dick’s face changed, broken glass anger dulling as he realized that yeah, he’d hit that nail pretty much on the head.

“Except that you did.” he said slowly, “Jesus, Jay.” He took another step backwards and let himself slump down into the chair Duke had briefly occupied, defeated. Jason stayed standing, moving to lean with his back against the wall. He crossed his arms over his chest as Dick took a moment. He really hated the way it felt like he had to be ready to move, even though he knew Dick wouldn’t hurt him.

“I’m rusty on the family thing, alright. It’s been a while since I’ve been anything but an Outlaw or the Red Hood, and it’s still weird. You’re telling me that if Bruce found out I’d been crossing the lazarus bridge and seemingly randomly wanted out of Gotham for a while, that he wouldn’t try to keep me there?”

“You can’t tell me that you think we’d actually let him.” Dick countered, his face flat.

“Little bit.”

“Oh my God, our dysfunctional family is showing through.” he said dryly. Jason burst into a fit of snickering that only the loopiness of countless hours of nonstop travelling could produce. Dick smirked at his own joke.

“Alright, get this through your skull, Little Wing, because I literally can’t think of a way to be any clearer without skywriting.” he announced.

“We worry because we love you. Don’t give me that look; deal with it. And if anyone knows how suffocating Bruce and Gotham and freaking Batman can be it’s me, so maybe talk to me before you pull another reverse Homeward Bound. Or Alfred’s going to be disappointed in you, and so will I.”

He let out a breath. “Low fucking blow, Big Bird. Pulling the Alfred card.”

“Damn straight. And you’re not B.S-ing? You’re actually feeling better?” he asked carefully. Dick was looking for the cracks in his foundation. It was nice that he didn’t try too hard to hide it, being not-blunt enough to still be considered polite, but still annoying. Less annoying that he was willing to accept an answer and not make him go into detail. Jason had a feeling he wouldn’t take ‘yeah, there’s a few human traffickers with 20 years in the game that don’t have a pulse anymore in Las Vegas. I worked through my problems with my fists and two pistols; Dr. Phil who?’ very well.

“For the third time, yeah. Kind of easier to adapt when you know what’s coming.” he admitted, tone clear that that was all he was willing to give. All he felt like he could. “And if you ask me again I’m throwing something at your head. Fair warning.”

Satisfied, Dick backs off. He tips back his head and hollers for Duke, who pops his head back in.

“Oh cool, you didn’t kill each other.” Climbing higher and higher on Jason’s list of favorites. He lets himself back in and vaults over the back of the couch, tucking up his legs criss-cross. Something about the fuzzy Batman socks was fucking hilarious. The superhero merch thing must have rubbed off on him from the siblings.

“Little victories.” Jason smirks.

“You're going back to Gotham?”

Jason shrugged, eyeing his motorcycle helmet by the door. He’d been careful to have his civilian one look nothing like iconic Red Hood one. Instead, it was patterned with a print of Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ save for the reflective yellow visor. He wouldn’t risk bringing anything that screamed ‘Red Hood’ into Dick’s apartment unless it was an emergency. “For a while, at least.”

“Besides, I can’t let you guys have all the fun down there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Jason's motorcycle helmet was inspired by one I saw being carried around by another student at my college. Can't remember what art piece it was, but I immediately was like 'Jason would'.)


	6. One Man's Trash Is Another Man's New Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason makes a friend in an alleyway, and has a sleepover.

Jaybird- Back in Gotham  
Damian Wayne- Fantastic.  
Jaybird- How do I know that was sarcastic?  
Jaybird- The punctuation. Always the punctuation.  
The Cooler Drake- out in NY on business  
The Cooler Drake- glad to hear things are good  
Jaybird- Okay so time to kill Dick for being a  
blabbermouth.  
The Cooler Drake- u deserved it  
Damian Wayne- Agreed.  
Cass- yes  
Jaybird- Wow.  
Jaybird- Ow, my feelings.  
The Cooler Drake- you’ll live  
Jaybird- Too late.  
The Cooler Drake- don’t make a death joke  
The Cooler Drake- damn it  
Babs- Knew it.  
Damian Wayne- Disappointing.  
Jaybird- Seriously though, I’m back working a night  
job in Gotham.  
Jaybird- New place; bad neighborhood but a good  
deal. You’ve got my number.  
The Cooler Drake- we’ll see you around  
Blondes Have More Fun- We better >:)  
Duke- >:)  
Cass- >:)  
Jaybird- Stop.  
Damian- This is foolish. It fits this mess of a  
group chat.  
Jaybird: For once, agreed.  
Jaybird- This is also harassment I’m calling the cops??  
The Cooler Drake- try it  
Babs- >:)

Jason rolls his eyes and pockets his phone, ignoring the anxiety crawling its way up his throat. They were a pack of chucklefucks, but it seemed to be working to make Damian act like the 13 year old he was. Being raised in the League of Assassins had done a number on him, but they'd dragged him out of his shell a bit it seemed.

Texting his family feels wrong somehow. Like he’s the little kid hiding under the table and waiting, having seen the clouds rolling in that signaled the hurricane of Willis and Catherine’s next fight.

But it also reminds him of how badly he misses his friends. Especially Roy, and he pointedly ignores the reason why.

If Roy was there, the chances of him sitting on a dumpster trying to figure out if the twinges of pain in his chest when he took a deep breath was a re-break of a rib or not would be substantially lower. That, and he hadn’t said anything out loud for around nine hours. He was a chatty guy, sue him.

But Roy and Kori were busy off-planet, and he’d felt like it was time to go back to Gotham for a while. Missed the rat-infested city more than he thought he was going to. Missed the bats in a different way now that he actually sort of knew them again. In a way that gave him a shit-ton of anxiety, but still missed them.

He poked at the weak points of his kevlar where pieces connected underneath the top fabric. No pain response from a fair amount of prodding at his ribs. He breathed a sigh of relief, flopping back against the dumpster lid with a thud. Good, the last thing he wanted was a broken or bruised rib. He could patrol, but it was annoying as all hell to deal with.

The sun would be up soon. Time to melt into bed in an hour or two if he felt like cutting off early. It had been as busy as the worst part of Gotham usually was, but not any worse either.

There was a crash from further down the alley. Minute of peace over, Jason sat up with a groan and looked over, ready to crack some skulls. Can’t a man lie on top of a dumpster in peace? Five minutes, that's all he asked.

One of the trash cans lining the alley had been knocked over. He frowned, dropping down from his perch and straightening up.

A tan, furry head poked out from around the next set of cans, black nose sniffing the air until it found the scent it wanted. The dog picked its next target. It reared up, placing massive paws on the edge of the metal can and pushing.

The thing was smart as hell. The garbage can toppled and she immediately stuck her head in, digging for scraps.

Without anything else vying for his attention, Jason crouched down, whistling lowly to get her attention without attracting anyone else’s. Her head picks up... wow she had a giant fucking head, and stares at him with her ears perked forward.

Really glad no one is around to see him, he makes a few kissy noises in an attempt to coax her over. Tries to make his body language as non-threatening as possible. Not exactly an easy feat when you’re six foot (one? He didn’t remember) with sturdy shoulders, but the dog doesn’t seem to mind very much. Didn’t even care about the helmet. More that there was a person in her alley.

She slinks over, low and cautious. Trying not to get too excited, he pulls off a glove and holds out a hand for her to sniff. A freezing wet nose bumps his palm and he gently pets along her back when she gets close enough.

Her coat was tan from top to tail save for the fact that it kind of looked like she was wearing eyeliner, and a coal black nose. Tough-looking but cute as hell.

Her tail gave a little wag as she snuffled at Jason’s palm. He’d had a dog when he was a kid but nothing nearly this big; she was a monster compared to the terrier they'd had. Short hair felt bristly against his hand as he pet her, scratchy with patches of cracking, dried mud.

No collar. Her ribs stuck out a little as he ran a hand over her back, too. Barely noticeable, but both aspects considered along with her well-honed trash can tipping skills meant she probably wasn’t anyone’s pet. Or that she’d been someone’s buddy at one point in her life, but not for a while.

Thunder rumbled in the distance and the dog jumped, pressing herself against his leg with a low growl at nothing in particular and everything around them. There was a storm rolling in if the clouds meant business.

Great.

He looks at her for a moment while chewing at his lip. This huge street dog glued to his side, looking up at the sky with the most pitiful look on her face like she expected it to come crashing down on their heads at any moment.

Yeah… he’s not getting out of this. Jason sighs, tapping the side of his helmet to activate the mic of his comm. “Red Hood to Bats, do you copy?”

The line crackled for a moment before Bruce’s (dammit) voice came through. “Batman copy. Is there a situation?” he gruffed. It was 2am, so B and Robin would be going off patrol soon if the big bat hadn’t already sent Robin home. School night. He shakes off a brief memory of trying to finish his biology paper before going out.

Jason spared a look to Garbage Dog, who gave him a sad little thump of her tail against the dirty asphalt.

“Kinda. I’m calling off patrol a few hours early. Ran into something I gotta take care of. Do with that what you will, I guess. Red Hood, out.”

He turned off the comm before anyone could respond, not interested in a conversation at the moment. Rarely was with them, they just kind of happened. “I’ll be right back. Please don’t make me come find you.” he requested. He stood, trying not to be heartsore at the slightly betrayed look Garbage Dog was shooting him for daring to move, and made his way two blocks east.

Jason grabbed the backpack stashed on a roof there, thankful that he had so many caches across Gotham. He stripped off his gear in exchange for the grey jeans and a dark red shirt he found crumpled at the bottom of the canvas, trying not to shiver as he yanked the fabric over his head. He buttoned a beaten-up black flannel over it and stuffed his gear into the bag before swinging it over his shoulder.

Walking went a lot slower, but the best excuse he could come up with for scaling buildings and jumping rooftops was parkour, so walking it was. The closest thing he could think of to a leash aside from grappling wire, which wouldn’t be safe to wrap around an animal’s neck, was the cord bracelet around his wrist. He picked it apart as he went, mentally making a not to re-weave it later.

Garbage Dog wasn’t exactly where he’d left her. A furry lump of tan was wedged in between the side of the dumpster and the wall of the apartment building, shaking like a cell phone on vibrate. He’s careful to make noise walking into the space between the two buildings.

“Hey, pretty girl.” he sing-songed, “There’s food in it for you if you don’t tear my face off. Please.”

Well, his face would be food if she so chose, but whatever.

She looked pissed off for a moment and faintly he thinks he might have made a really shitty judgement call (wouldn’t be the first time) until she hears his voice. Garbage dog uncurls slightly but stays low, her tail giving one half-hearted thump that resonates against the metal dumpster.

She hadn’t recognized him. Or course she hadn’t; he was some random guy in jeans and a flannel instead of kevlar and a red helmet. He resisted the urge to facepalm for the risk of spooking the dog even further. Just barely.

Over the next several minutes, he scooted closer and closer. Jesus, she must be freezing. It had only just stopped snowing when he’d been gone and her hair was short, short. Like a person with a buzzcut. He was freezing his ass off and he had warm clothes on.

He was about five feet away from her when the thunder and lightning really got going. The sky had opened up and unleashed on them, but both were protected from the torrent of rain by the building’s overhang. Rivers of rainwater were spindling through the cracks in the gritty asphalt, ever so slowly encroaching on and threatening to flood their hiding place.

Thunder cracked overhead, illuminating the alley for a split second as lightning flashed. Garbage dog moved to press all her weight into Jason’s side. Apparently it wasn’t enough. She wiggled and wormed her way into his lap, knocking his arms out of the way and leaning what felt like around seventy pounds of dog directly into his chest.

Jason let her chill out and calm down for a little bit, keeping his arms looped around her in a loose hug, before tying the unravelled cord bracelet around her neck. Those things had been such a good idea that he was frankly shocked that this was the first time he’d discovered a time to use it.

He carefully shifted her off his legs in between thunder claps and stood up. His knees cracked in protest loud enough for Garbage dog to get a look of concern on her dog-face.

Jason lead her out of the alley. Letting her go at her own pace, which alternated between an almost bouncy trot and a nervous stalk when the thunder boomed overhead. All the tall buildings and long streets of Gotham funneled the sound and made it echo like gunshots. He loved storms now, but hated them as a kid. When you lived on the streets, bad weather meant trouble and a whole host of problems; he could understand why the dog wasn’t a fan of it.

By the time they made it back to his apartment building, both of them were soaked to the bone. Bad enough that Jason unzipped his hoodie and wrung it out outside the doors in a futile attempt not to make a huge mess before he went in. But strolling in with the mother of all pit bulls was going to draw attention as it was, so whatever.

Garbage Dog had a vendetta against elevators apparently, because it took a cool three minutes to get her to even think about setting foot in the big metal box with a shit ton of buttons. Jason wasn’t even annoyed; he didn’t blame her. Elevators were the worst. A tiny space that creaked and rattled, and that particular one probably hadn’t seen maintenance for years.

Finally, at around 4 in the morning, Jason finally stumbled into his apartment. He set his backpack down (he’d throw it, but equipment and guns) on the rickety side table, and collapsed onto the couch. Garbage Dog immediately took it upon herself to inspect every inch of his apartment. For burglars, for feng shui, just for the hell of it, he had no idea.

Rainwater slowly seeped from his clothes into the couch the longer he laid there, but he was so worn out he really couldn’t be bothered to remedy the problem. Well, guess he wasn’t sleeping there tonight. Today. Ah, who frickin’ cares, it’s his couch.

Garbage Dog strolled up to the side of the couch, nails clacking on the floor to announce her arrival. She waited until Jason turned over to look at her and then promptly shook herself out, spraying water in every direction. Mostly, directly in Jason’s face.

“Thanks.” he deadpanned. She stood there and panted at him as a response. Jesus, her breath reeked. She did have the excuse of literally eating garbage but wow.

He dragged himself up and stumbled over to the bathroom, peeling off his sodden clothing until he was standing in his boxers, hair dripping on the tile. He flung the pile of clothes into the shower with a wet slap, grabbing a towel and scrubbing at his hair for a second before rounding on Garbage Dog.

Drying her wasn’t the battle he thought it would be. She still had a minor episode at every rumble or crash of thunder, but his dog when he had been a little kid had always had the same reaction. Parents fighting or thunderstorms meant a hideout under the table. Often with Jason.

Eventually he managed to work the mud out of her coat with his fingers. She was a pretty, medium-light tan color. Bigger than a typical pit bull should be, legs longer, but she looked exactly like one so he couldn’t figure out exactly what the mix was. But whatever the other part was gave her enough height for her head to come nearly to his hip and he was by no means a short guy.

Well, he had a dog now.

Of all the pets he could’ve picked up, a dog would be the easiest to move around with. Just put her on a leash and boom; portable canine. A cat would have been a nightmare in that aspect, dog was the lesser of evils.

Except you couldn’t put a dog on a motorcycle. Shiiiit.

Maybe one of those dogs trained by weirdos that could do back flips and balance random junk on its nose, but probably not Garbage Dog.

“I have no idea what to do with you.” he announced. She stared at him for a moment, dark eyes definitely judgmental, before turning and padding into his bedroom.

Jason followed her. Didn’t have anything better to do, really. Watching as she leaped up onto the bed, turned around a few times, and plopped down on the covers like dead weight.

“Good idea.”

Jason grabbed a long sleeved thermal shirt from the back of his desk chair, tugged it on over his head, and burrowed under the covers. Garbage Dog wiggled in a strange impression of an army crawl until she reached the head of the bed, curling up in the blankets. She was a solid pressure against the side of his thigh, huffing once like he'd greatly inconvenienced her by making her scoot over to him, before closing her eyes

Despite the pain in his chest and his still-wet hair, not a bad day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone wondering, Garbage Dog is an American Pit Bull crossed with a Dogo Argentino, and I have officially run out of British Bakeoff episodes. This isn't going to be the end of the series, and I'm about to start another one (hint, a bunch of AUs centering around Jason). I've loved writing this even if it has been in starts. Hope you like the chapter!


	7. New Friend, New Case

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason spends some quality time with his new roommate and gets some work done.

Jason wakes up in the late afternoon with a scream caught in his throat and a faceful of dog. It’s confusing enough to snap him out of it. Enough to blink groggily at the giant, wiggly pit bull in his bed, staring at him with a look on her face like she’d just accomplished a major life goal.

Ghost Jason is also intrigued by the dog, staring at her with a barely-concealed look of ‘I really want to pet this fucking thing’ on his face. Too bad, you’re dead.

He sits up, rests his head in his hands and breathes for a minute while Garbage Dog tries to lick his face. Gets the tremor in his hands to stop. Jason shook when he was feeling particularly emotionally fucked up, but years working with projectiles (and Roy) had taught him a few tricks for steadying himself.

At one point, she licks his ear and it’s disgusting enough for Jason to bodily throw himself sideways off the bed. Most of the covers aside from what she’s lying on go with him; his legs are thoroughly tangled up in them. Must have been thrashing around in his sleep.

“Thanks for the wake-up, but what do you want?” he groaned, dangerously close to whining, scrubbing a hand through his hair. Sleeping with it wet had messed it up; the inky strands stick straight in some spots and waved into loose curls in others.

Garbage Dog lowers her front end, wagging her tail, and barks once at him. Jesus, he’d be kind of put off by the sound if he didn’t know what an absolute goofy sweetheart she was. Definitely had the bark of a scary-ass dog. Or at least true to her size.

Shit, he forgot to feed her last night. Morning? Whatever. He pulls on a pair of track pants and pads into the kitchen, GD right on his heels.

He doesn’t have dog food. Acceptable, when you take into account that yesterday he didn’t have a dog, either. But he has eggs and a stove, so fuck it. She probably wouldn’t care; they’d met with her eating out of the trash.

He grabs the carton of eggs and sets them on the counter. By the excited look in her eyes, Garbage Dog knows exactly where this is going and is loving it. So he does what feels like the stupidest thing he’s done all week and makes his dog a plate of eggs.

The second he sets the bowl on the ground GD sticks her head in it and goes to town. It’s frankly disgusting to watch but impressive. He’s a little worried she’s going to choke based on the nascar-fast way she wolfs down the food, but she gets through it okay.

He grabs the plate he made for himself and a fork, puts enough chili flakes in it to be considered inedible to anyone but him, and tucks in. Garbage Dog begs for a moment, whining softly at him and staring at him with those big, dark eyes. A half-formed idea in his head, Jason lowers the plate. Close enough to yank it back if she goes for it (she’d have to jump) but also close enough for her to be able to smell it.

GD sniffs, sneezes at the practically radioactive amount of spice, and trots away. Smart. He hops up on the counter, picking at his food as he re-weaves his bracelet. It takes him a couple of minutes but he clips the finished product back around his wrist.

Jason tosses his dishes in the sink, almost leaving them for later before he realizes that GD is clever enough (and maybe big enough) to find her way up there and get into them.

With the sigh to end all sighs, he does the dishes and puts everything back in its place. Which leads to him thinking about the good possibility that if he goes out he’s basically surrendering all of his stuff, even if there wasn’t much of it, over to Garbage Dog to chew on when she eventually got bored.

The last place he expected himself to be at 3pm on a Monday was a goddamn pet store. But there he was, trying to dig through his brain to the era in which he’d been a kid with parents and a dog and what the scraggly thing had liked, and scaled it up to fit the monster that was Garbage Dog.

He makes two trips, stuffing smaller items in his backpack and strapping down the collapsed crate to the back of his motorcycle. Jason opts out of putting an owner's name and address on the back of the collar’s tag. Too much moving around, too many rotating aliases to stick one on there and he couldn’t use his given one for obvious reasons. After running through his options, the number of his burner gets engraved on the back. He leaves the face of it blank. She needs a name; he just hasn’t thought of the perfect one yet.

She’ll be staying home on patrol. The only role Garbage Dog will have in vigilante business would be accompanying him on surveillance legwork in civilian clothes. Deciding on that took him about half a second. The amount of guns he saw on a weekly basis was enough to make his mind up for him. And trying to get eighty-ish pounds of pit bull onto a roof sounded like a fucking ordeal.

Garbage Dog prances around the apartment in her new collar. It’s flat black, nothing too fancy aside from the dark red stitching, but she’s absolutely showing off.

She goes from strutting to tearing around the apartment like someone had lit her tail on fire. Running in circles around the coffee table that really only had 3 ½ legs to his bedroom and back. He hasn’t had a dog for over a decade, so it takes him a minute to realize that he’s seen it before. ‘Zoomies’. She’s happy, and it makes him happy.

It feels like he’s dropped into an alternate universe. Just some random, regular early-twenties guy in half-pajamas watching his dog gallop around his poorly furnished living room. No one watching would ever be able to tell that his 15-year old ghost self was spying on them from the kitchen. But it felt so incredibly, stereotypically normal that it almost gave him a feeling like he was being punked. No, yeah, it definitely did.

Jason’s been at it for so long, pitched headfirst so Mariana’s Trench deep into being the Red Hood and let it swallow him up, that the entire situation had turned into something of a foreign concept. He didn’t compartmentalize like Bruce; Jason Todd was the Red Hood and vice versa.

This was his apartment, not his safehouse, because the only reason people kept giant dogs in safehouses in Crime Alley was to guard drugs or weapons stashes and he only had one of those. Just having things for a purpose other than an end goal was difficult to wrap his head around. He’d have to use the foreclosed building on 5th as a safehouse; it had rats but that had never bothered him before.

By the time he made his peace with it, it stopped having something of a life crisis, it had turned into late afternoon. He had maybe three hours until the start of his patrol. The drug game in Park Row was always hot but it had dipped recently to focus around weed. And fuck, he’d gladly take that as a win. Any night that he didn’t need to dose someone with Narcan was a good one.

Even with all the attempted muggings, break-ins and robberies, murders, kidnappings, and horrifically twisted shit courtesy of the perverted freaks that lurked around when the sun went down, the tiny improvement on the drug front felt fucking amazing. Like hacking his way through the concrete jungle night after night was actually doing something, and it wasn’t just Jason shouting into a void.

At least it wasn’t meth, or heroin, or fentanyl, or molly, or any of the countless strains of drugs that he was constantly pulling off the street and destroying. He didn’t give a shit if people wanted to get stoned.

Garbage Dog was incredibly polite. Not much of a sense of personal space, but when he got cracking on a few case files detailing a string of dead working girls a few blocks over, her paws never touched the papers scattered across the floor. Tip-toeing around carefully when she reached the edges of the flood of red-marked files like she knew how important it was not to mess them up. Treating them with a sense of sacred reverence that was so oddly considerate and undeniably sweet that he couldn’t help but scratch her behind the ears and remind her what a good girl she was. Just in case she’d forgotten.

She also has an incredible affinity to look offended, employing it when Jason takes a breath wrong and starts coughing. Man, he really needed to dust or something.

Three dead sex workers in a week. Everything in their places was torched after they died, which lead him to believe that the culprit was someone who would have the kind of personal knowledge as to where they lived. The working guys and gals of Gotham were incredibly private about their addresses if they had them, and even if they didn’t they tended to be tight lipped about where they slept. Cut the risk of jealous, clingy customers coming after them.

None of the fires had gotten too crazy, but it was only a matter of time before one got out of control. He made a note to check in with a few of the girls working the heart of Crime Alley later. Nothing happened in the Alley without Charlene and Alexis hearing about it. If any of the johns had been particularly threatening, they were always glad to give their names and/or description over to the Red Hood for him to check it out.

One of the fires wasn’t that far from his new apartment. Only about roughly two blocks away. The other two were in a converted building over in the warehouse district, and in one of the run-down blocks just outside of his regular patrol range.

No correlation in location. He hadn’t expected there to be one, so he wasn’t surprised. But it meant that a random building somewhere in Gotham was going to be lit on fire in the next few days, and he had no clue which one. Safe to assume that it would be in his neck of the woods; it wouldn’t make much sense for the girls to live on the opposite side of the city to the one that they worked.

That was all he had. Yeah, he’d be visiting with Alexis and Charlene later. He had a general idea of where they’d be on a Monday night, and if he offered to buy them dinner then they probably wouldn’t tell him to scram. Talking to the Red Hood had a tendency to scare away customers, or so he'd been told.

Jason was particularly pissed off about the case. Simmering anger at the GCPD for the pathetic attempt at police work. For a department that claimed no bias, they sure cared a lot less about dead sex workers in Crime Alley than break-ins in better parts of town. Maybe he’d be less of a cynical asshole if the lack of effort had at all surprised him. Just reports and a few pictures, not even any statements. Like damn, they were busy, but what the fuck was this?

He pours over the files, connecting what he can and strategizing for a bit. Moving on to look at a few other ones. Scratching scribbles in red over their surfaces in his own scrawling handwriting. Making a plan to swing by the blocks that had the highest population of street kids hiding from the system. Ensure that no one was giving them any trouble.

Jason had an undeniable soft-spot for them; he knew all too well how hard it was to live like that. He’d been in their shoes before, evading CPS and starvation with a switchblade stuffed up the sleeve of his hoodie for the rest of the shit he’d had to watch his back for, lest someone stick a knife in it. Seeing the ones that had let their guard down and paid the price for it, dead bodies in alleyways and dumpsters. There were a lot of things that had made him who he was. That was definetly one of them.

He makes sure GD is occupied with a bone before he stuffs his gear in the ratty backpack he’d picked up from the roof last night/morning and heads out for the warehouse on 5th. Sure, it had rats and it was drafty as hell, but it was always empty. Abandoned a while ago, but the heavy chains locking the doors shut and the layers of thick boards over the windows meant that the only way in was a hatch in the roof. One that was tricky as hell to get to without a) knowing exactly where it was, as it blended pretty well into the rusty rooftop, and b) being able to navigate compromised metal without stepping wrong and bringing it down. The terrain on the roof was sketchy as hell; hence why nobody bothered with the place. It was just an added bonus that the heavily graffitied exterior helped the place blend in seamlessly with the surrounding buildings.

Jason waits until he’s inside the warehouse to ditch his civvies for gear. There’s no cameras to catch him going in or out; too many surrounding places storing stolen or illegal goods for that to be anywhere near good business practice to put them up.

The place is filled with cobwebs, gauzy white stretched up high in the corners like a budget haunted house. But it’s secure, and decently clean for an abandoned building, so it’s one of the better safehouses he’s occupied.

A pile of broken storage shelves is shoved into the corner. Bits and pieces of mangled metal from sets broken into fractures all shoved together until it was just a tangle of nothing useful. Unless you found a pocket of space that you could shove a stocked first-aid kit and a backpack in. That had been a goddamn joy of a discovery. He made sure to check over the medical supplies before he went out. Jason was careful, but injuries came with the territory, and you never knew if that was the night you might have to patch yourself up.

He’d probably drag himself to the cave in the event that he got hurt enough for stitches; there was no Roy or Kori to help him out right now. Giving them to someone else was easy enough, but doing it to yourself solo was a nightmare and a half. And it wasn’t even possible in some areas. Not even a contortionist could stitch up a gash on their own back.

Satisfied with the condition he’d found it in, Jason shoved the first-aid kit back into the little alcove in the wreckage. It could use some fresh gauze, but other than that it seemed to be fine. Usable, at the very least. Clean enough not to give him gangrene or some shit if he had to use it.

Double-checking any entry-points was habit at that point. Everything seemed to be fine. You’d need tools or time to get in anywhere but the well-camouflaged roof hatch. He scaled a dusty storage rack and let himself out, heading for the red-light district.

Consider him clocked in; Jason had some skulls to crack.


	8. Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason makes decisions.

Charlene is not very happy to see him.

She tells him this. Loudly. Jason knows better than to sneak up anyone in Crime Alley, especially sex workers, and expect not to get hit. He stays up on his perch, crouched on an entryway arch over an old building that had been converted into a bar, until she spots him.

Charlene narrows her eyes at him, putting her hands on her hips and motioning him over with a jerk of her chin. He does, and the second he’s in range she takes her sparkly gold handbag by the strap and swings, nailing him in the chest with it.

It was light; she hadn’t been trying to hit him hard enough to hurt. “Uh, ow?” he ventures, taking a step back. Charlene screws up her mouth and stalks forward, pointing a purple-polished nail in his face.

“Where the fuck have you been? Thought you mighta died.” she hisses at him. Jason smirks behind the helmet, really wanting to pull a joke but his audience didn’t have the context to make it funny.

“Lotta faith in me, Charle. Should I be insulted or touched?”

“Bit ‘a both.” she decided. Charlene leaned back against the lamp post, crossing one leg over the other and looking him over. Jason counts himself glad she didn’t try to kick him. He would have dodged, but taking the heel of her stiletto ankle boots to his leg would have hurt arguably worse than a punch to the face. High-heeled shoes weren’t just for show in her line of work; a weapon by another name, if she needed it.

“Glad to see your face, Hood.” she concedes. She pulls the edges of her faux fur coat tighter around herself, trying to get the fuzzy grey to shield her more fully from the cold. Jason shifts so he’s blocking the worst of the breeze and she smirks.

“Glad to be around.” She rolls her eyes. The flickery light overhead catches on her glittery gold eyeshadow. She could do one hell of a smokey-eye, that was for sure.

“You want information. You know my price.” she chirped.

“Damn straight.” he grinned. Charlene’s nose wrinkled with her own grin. She threaded her arm with his and dragged him along, practically skipping..

The first time he’d ever gotten information from Charlene, she’d refused to say a thing for less than her exact rate. So Jason had paid her what she’d asked, and they’d gotten tacos from the only food truck in Park Row that wouldn’t give you food poisoning.

They both ordered, and sat on the curb with their spoils. Jason took off his helmet, setting it on the pavement next to his hip, and dug into his food. Getting dark was his sunrise, so if he was playing technicalities it was chicken tacos for breakfast. Not a bad way to live.

“Alexis alright?” he asked between bites. The thought had been nagging at him, and with the murders with had gone from a whisper to a shout in the back of his head.

Charlene understood immediately. In Crime Alley speak, asking if someone was alright extended from ‘had a bad day at work’ to ‘might be wearing cement shoes at the bottom of the harbor’ and everything in between. Talking to someone who got it on the same, strange level was like stepping back into a pair of shoes he’d forgotten in the back of his closet. Letting the faint traces of what remained of his accent slip out, and hearing it repeated back. “Sick at home.” she assured him.

He took another bite of his taco, a few shreds of lettuce falling out and onto the cracked street. “Good.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full; it’s fuckin’ gross.” she joked. He rolled his eyes behind the domino, smirking.

“So the girls that got offed; Marcella, Janie, and Sugar, in that order. Marce and Sugar spent nights over by the Bowery. Janie bounced between there, here, and the Diamond District on weekends. So all they got in common was workin’ the Bowery.” Charlene started, eager to get business out of the way. He didn’t blame her; she had a lot of skin in that game. Any headway Jason made in the case protected her, too.

“Marcella and Janie had to have someone scared off a week or two ago. Couple a’ fellas kept coming around and harrasin’ her. Tryin’ to buy her things and then yellin’ at her when she didn’t want ‘em, and I think one of the freaks wanted her to move in with him. She had no idea who they were.” she revealed, keeping her voice even and low. Wouldn’t be very good for her if anyone heard the specifics of what they were discussing.

Jason took their trash over to a dumpster in the alley behind them before rejoining her on the curb. He pulled his half empty carton of cigarettes out of the inside pocket of his jacket and offered on to her. Nails filed to a soft point plucked one out and he lit it for her, lighting his own before shoving the carton and lighter back into his pocket.

The ember glowed brighter as she breathed in, igniting like a tiny sun in the growing darkness. She released the smoke in a tired sigh. “Joey over on 5th busted one of the guy’s kneecaps, second one died in a bar fight gone wrong, but nobody could find the third one. He might be your ticket.” she advised, promptly giving him the best run-down on the third suspect as she could. Name, physical description, around what time and location in the Bowery the two girls had been getting harassed. She was an absolute angel.

“Thanks, Charle.” he said earnestly. She shrugged, taking another long drag. She tucked a lock of chestnut brown hair behind her ear, dark eyes dangerous as she looked out into the distance.

“What can I say; I liked ‘em.” she admitted, words rough with emotion for just a moment before she recovered. Grieving. “Tough as nails. All three of ‘em. You find whoever did this, hear me?”

Damn, he was familiar with the particular with the particular brand of venom in her voice. Felt it in his fingers whenever he connected a punch, restless in his bones when he pulled a trigger and hit a kneecap instead of someone’s forehead.

“Loud and clear.”

They sat in relative silence for a few minutes as they smoked, broken up by a little chatter but the goings on around Gotham. Jason had slipped the guy working the truck extra cash for the exact reason that their side of the street was empty for a good fifteen feet on either side of the pair. Parted like the Red Sea for the Red Hood, giving him a wide enough berth for a plague victim.

Jason walked her back to the corner he’d met up with her on, fingers hooked into the lip of his helmet to swing it gently back and forth. He slipped her the amount she’d asked for the first time she’d informed for him. She casually pocketed the cash, tucking it into her boot instead of her handbag for safe keeping, and patted him on the shoulder.

They snubbed out their cigarettes on the top of the overflowing trash can next to the lamp post, Charlene looked him up and down one more time. Searching for injuries. It was a weird situation, but they were friends enough for her to try and look out for him when he was being stupid. Thankfully, she couldn’t spot the faint sting in his ribs lingering from the night before.

“Watch out for yourself, Hood.” she advised, flicked her hair over her shoulder.

“Pretty sure I should be saying that to you, right now.”

She snorted, shaking her head at the thought. “See you around.”

With that, she turned and walked away, heels clacking on the discolored sidewalk. Heading for a part of town that hadn’t just witnessed her chatting with the Red Hood. Charlene hadn’t been kidding when she’d told Jason being seen with him was bad for business.

He had a few parts of town to check out. A guy with scarred tally marks all over him, trying to ‘save’ people. It screamed Zsasz, written in flashing neon. It made sense; the bats had never recovered him after an Arkham breakout last year. The arson was new, but leave it to a serial killer to decide brutal murder alone didn’t have enough dramatic flair.

Jason scaled the side of the nearest building, eager to burn off some of the restless energy that had been building. Roy had compared him to a wildfire once. He… wasn’t entirely wrong.

He leaps from the rooftop to the next, savoring the few seconds where it’s just him flying through the open air. Free as a bird until he hit the ground of the other roof. It was lower than the one he’d leapt from. He turned the landing into a roll to spare his knees, crossing the roof in a few running strides and flinging himself from the ledge.

He grabbed for the outside of the fire escape, feet slotting between the bars and fingers curling around the top railing. The metal rattled with the force of catching him for a moment, but he was already straightening to swing his leg over and start up towards the roof.

The Ironwood building wasn’t the tallest in Park Row, but it came a close second and was one hell of a vantage point at the edge of a cluster of decently tall buildings. He settled himself on the ledge and stared out over his slice of Gotham. All its smoke stacks and car horns and the stray blimp.

He liked to pretend he’d gotten over his obsessions with gargoyles when he was a kid. Couldn’t help but to envision himself as one as he crouched on the runner, watching for trouble. Keeping the bad spirits in check by being scarier.

A scream shattered his peace like a sledgehammer, trailed a half second later by the resounding crack of a gunshot. Jason’s head whipped around to the direction of the sound. Back towards where his apartment was at the end of the block.Never had to look far to find trouble, did he?

He stood up and broke into a sprint, hurtling the roof’s runner and shooting his grapple. It caught and he swung, rolling onto another roof at the end of the arc before doing it again. Rinse and repeat until he could get to a low enough point that he didn’t have to be careful picking what building he shot the line at or risk wrenching his freshly-healed shoulder.

Black smoke was curling from the windows almost all of the way up the building. He cursed, and in a moment of broken habit he’d live to regret, didn’t call in.

Instead, Jason shot his grapple and swung himself up to grab onto the bars of the fire escape near the top. Somebody shrieked at seeing the Red Hood come flying out of nowhere like a goddamn spider monkey. Jason didn’t give it his attention, focusing on scaling the fire escape by the outside to keep the way clear for the people evacuating.

The window pouring smoke had been shattered, not opened. He swung over and stuck his head through. Squinting even though his helmet blocked the irritants from getting to his eyes.

A body. Dressed in an immaculate button up and slacks, and lying on the floor in a puddle of blood that was soaking itself into the beat-up carpet. Dead beyond a doubt by the volume of blood lost, lack of breathing movement, and the position of the neat hole punched directly over where the guy’s heart was.

Jason registered the tally marks on his arms. Exposed by the rolled up sleeves. Zsasz had made a grave mistake attacking at the home of his next victim instead of a random location. There was nobody else in the interior of the apartment that he could see, and the majority of it was consumed by raging fire. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of him being able to stop it.

Abandoning Zsasz’s corpse to the flames, he stuck his head back out and dashed up the fire escape to the floor above. Kicking out a window pane was nothing, the glass shattering under the force. Gotta love steel-toed boots.

He crawled in and was across the empty apartment in three strides, yelling at the terrified occupants to get out. That the building was on fire and they better move or roast. The two thirty-somethings dash for the window he’d kicked out, one of them grabbing the scraggly tabby cat off the table.

He thanks his usually unlucky stars that the building is tall and skinny. It means less people per floor. Less doors to break down, less terrified people to bodily shove towards the viable exits.

He’s not exactly sure when the first time he takes off his helmet and shoves it on someone’s head while he guides them to an exit is, but by the amount of times he does it he would have lost count anyway.

The flames had been getting closer, eating up the building like flash paper. He knows nothing above the start of it is going to survive. Whatever Zsasz had used to start it was one mean motherfucker, and it was not playing around.

He’s a mess, sweating like crazy with the intense heat and just about to bust down the last door of many when he hears a kid crying from the other side. The alarms are going off, and it terrifies the 11-year old girl he finds inside into hysterics.

There isn’t another soul in the apartment, just a tiny asian kid with pigtail braids who rushes him as the door comes down, a beanie baby frog clutched in her little hands. No parents to be seen, not even a babysitter. Fucking irresponsible- he cuts off the thought and tamps down his anger to stew over later.

The smoke is thick enough to make it hard to see, and he doesn’t waste a second. His fingers find the latch of his helmet and he yanks it off for the final time, he's lost count at that point, and fits it onto her head. The smoke burns acrid in his nose but he doesn’t care. It’s so big that the seal closes at the base of her neck but it closes, so he doesn’t care about that either.

Jason scoops her up aims at the window, firing once as he crosses the room to weaken it and shattering it with a kick. No time to mess with the rusted-over padlock keeping it shut. He wiggles his foot around to clear the leftover glass before passing her over to the other side, climbing out to join her. She doesn’t fuss as he picks her up again, just clutches her toy and buries her head in his jacket.

Fire licks up the outside of the building now. There’s nothing he can do but aim his grapple and jump.

The kid lets out a ear-splitting shriek to rival the wind screaming in his ears as they plummeted. For one heart-stopping second, he isn’t sure if the line caught, until the wire goes taught and he swings over to the next building.

His feet slam on the outside of the building, sending a shockwave through his legs that he can feel in his the cores of his teeth. Jesus, that was not going to be pleasant tomorrow. He’d been careful to aim high enough that he wasn’t swinging down, but trying to balance holding a kid and not slamming them both into the side of a building like a bug on a windshield was no stroll in the fucking park.

They’d gotten out just in time. Literally. He looks back only to see the section of the escape they were standing on engulfed in flames. For a moment, Jason just stares at the roaring mess of glowing reds and oranges that is the burning remains apartment building. Feels the phantom of the heat they’d just escaped on his face.

It’s a total loss; the entire thing is too far gone to even think about trying to save. The only thing the fire department can do now is try to contain it so it doesn’t spread, wanting to take out as much as it can down with it. It was a tragedy; no one in Park Row that wasn’t pushing something illegal had the means to start over again and that was a lot of peoples’ only place to go quite literally going up in smoke. But he’d be damned if it wasn’t beautiful.

He gets his feet under him on the molding a few feet down before disengaging the line to fire it again and jump. To his surprise, the girl doesn’t scream in his ear. Just makes a sharp little squeak and clings onto him for dear life.

It takes him three more times to get to the street level, and by that time the growing pain in his head and chest was starting to be more than a little sting.

Jason nearly forgets to take back his helmet from off the kid’s head as he hands her over to a cop who looks beyond fucking bewildered at the Red Hood holding a little kid. One who had to be coaxed into letting go of him from the death grip she had on his jacket. At least he didn’t get a gun or taser pointed at him.

The crowd is a mixed bag of reactions. He can tell who the Park Row natives from who was just passing through by the looks on their faces. The Red Hood was Crime Alley’s, and they knew he’d never hurt a kid. Everyone else that had come to gawk, however, looked like they wanted the cops to taze him before the vigilante with guns changed his mind.

He grumbles something about finding her completely alone and locked in. His chest is killing him, and he kind of feels like he’s going to throw up.

He wants to go home.

So he does. Marks the kid’s name in his head (Lillian Sung) to look into later. Keeps his fingers hooked into the lip of his helmet because even if his helmet is well-ventilated through the filter, he desperately needs to feel the cold air sink into his lungs. And he just… walks away. The crowd parts to let him.

He grapples onto a roof and makes his way back to the apartment. He’s not supposed to, but he needs to.

Belatedly, Jason realizes somewhere in the back of his mind that even though he’s got an earpiece in, the comm is off. He hadn’t realized it when he’d been running around in the middle of a burning building. Too focused on the task at hand. Too much at stake to get distracted. Too full of adrenaline. Frankly, kind of overwhelmed and really needing to just feel like himself for a night. A lot of reasons, but it still makes him want to bang his head against a wall for being so stupid.

Now, he just feels like utter shit.

Jason gets to the roof of the building and trudges down the fire escape. He nearly misses his own window, but catches the mistake in time. He more falls into the apartment than climbs, letting the helmet bounce against the scratched-up tile and roll out of his reach as GD sniffs worriedly at him.

He really has to puke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


	9. Knock Knock, Fuck Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smoke inhalation occurs when you breathe in harmful smoke particles and gases. Inhaling harmful smoke can inflame your lungs and airway, causing them to swell and block oxygen. This can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome and respiratory failure.  
> "Knock, Knock."

Gotham is still freezing, and Tim’s counting the days until the city actually realizes it’s supposed to be warming up. For now, he settles for thermal under armour and tries not to freeze his ass off.

Barbara’s voice chimes in his ear, and he’s glad to hear her, until it hits him how off she sounds. “Oracle to bats. I think we’ve got ourselves a bit of a situation.” she says slowly. Tim can hear the clacking of keys in the background as she types furiously, muttering something under her breath he can’t quite make out.

They’re walking across a rooftop, and the tone of her voice stops both of them dead. Confused and worried, never a good thing when it came to the unshakeable Barbara.

“Explain.” Batman growled. It was weird how easily Bruce was able to slip into the signature Batman gruff for hours and hours on patrol without straining his vocal chords. Maybe he had the same not-quite deformity as the guy from the Beetlejuice musical.

“I’ll just let him.”

Barbara’s voice cut out, quickly replaced by Roy’s.

“-ason open the door!” he shouted. There was some muffled yelling and the dull thud of something banging against wood in response.

Dick and Tim shared a look, becoming participants in Barbara’s confusion. Dick narrowed his eyes, signalling for Tim to keep an eye on their surroundings while they were stopped. They weren’t hidden in the least, visible from all the rooftops around them.

He accepted with a nod, turning half his attention to the sounds around them. A lot of car horns down below and the general din of Gotham. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Arsenal?”

Roy cursed under his breath at the sound of Dick’s voice, but not at him. The archer sounded at the end of his rope in patience.

“Got an emergency over here; something’s wrong with Hood.”

The beat of silence afterwards lasted an eternity, until Stephanie’s voice popped into the channel. “You wanna elaborate for the crowd here, Arsenal?” she urged.

He huffed, “I just got here, don’t know how long it’s been going on, but Hood’s sick. He locked himself in the bathroom and I can hear him throwing up through the door. Coughing pretty hard, too.”

There was another thump and Roy to ‘shut up and get over it’. It was Jason kicking the bathroom door like an angry toddler, hard enough that it made Tim flinch.

“So he’s sick?”

“No.” Roy said sharply, “They’re working to put out a burning building down the street, and he ditched some of his gear before he locked himself in there. There’s ash and soot ground into the kevlar and the whole getup reeks like fire.” he explained.

“And now he’s throwing up.” Tim pieced together. Nausea and vomiting. But Jason had a filtered helmet; it didn’t make any sense. “Is he disoriented?”

“Considering he’s hiding from me in a bathroom, I’d say so.” Roy admitted with a groan. He could hear the frustration in his “I’m assuming we’re all on the same page here?”

“Carbon monoxide poisoning.” Tim said flatly, pinching the bridge of his nose against a tension headache. “Can you pick the lock?”

“There’s a dog in there guarding him.”

“Say that again?” Dick asked, the look on his face like Roy had just told him Jason’s new apartment was on the moon.

“A dog. Pretty big, judging by the bark.”

“When did he acquire a dog?” Damian demanded. Of course that’s what the kid focused on.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know? I just got here!” Roy snapped, wire thin patience snapping like a strand of spaghetti. “But Hood’s got weapons and a guard dog, and he’s not rational, so I need a freaking hand over here!”

“Where are you?” There it was. Mother hen Dick Grayson had been activated. If there was one trait that outshone all others that he’d gotten from being one of the children of Bruce Wayne, it was the protector gene.

There’s a burst of door-muffled coughing before Roy answers. Deep in the chest, hacking like something is preventing Jason from breathing properly and he’s trying to get it out. A red flag pops up in his brain and he files it away for later. “Corner of Addison and 3rd, 7th floor, apartment 108b.” Roy rattled off. “Trace the phone; I’ll leave it on.”

Tim’s mouth opens to say something else when the connection cuts abruptly. A sharp ‘click’ that resounds the message of ‘can’t talk, but please help’. He shuts his mouth with a frown, fully turning back to share another look with Dick.

Who still looked worried. Not biting his nails yet, he’d been trying to break the habit, but obviously distressed. Tim doesn’t blame him, he’s not even that close with Jason and he’s worried, but they worry centered around different things. Dick, about Jason’s welfare, and Tim, about what the hell could have forced the Red Hood into taking off his helmet for extended periods of time in the middle of a raging fire. Civilians? Was it broken? Did Jason just decide not to care? The second Robin was such a wild card and yet somehow so predictable that it could have been anything.

“Red Robin and Nightwing en route.”

“Batman and Robin en route.”

If Dick’s eyebrows had gone any higher, they’d have disappeared into his hair. Tim manages not to let the complete shock register on his face, but just barely.

Bad idea.

Bad, bad idea, and Bruce knows it, he just doesn’t care. Because he was the one hold the protector trait originally.

They don’t argue with him, even if Tim thinks bringing Damian over might be another notch in the long sting of bad ideas. Jason was volatile on a good day, and even if he’d gotten better Damian’s filter left a lot to be desired. Wasn’t like the kid didn’t try; there was just a lot of damage done that he had to get through.

With Damian, Tim could at least attempt to see things through his eyes. The toxic way he was raised combined with the complete 360 of values he’d been thrown into when Bruce took custody of him. Jason was tougher to understand.

From what he knew, Jason had one hell of a rough childhood. But he’d been a happy (or at least he’d looked it), mischievous kid who tried to get criminals to quip back and forth with him before he beat them. Tim had seen it a hundred different ways, from behind dumpsters, on fire escapes, out the windows of abandoned buildings, and all from behind the lens of a camera.

But then Jason had died, and Bruce spiraled until Tim wasn’t sure if he was going to bother to catch himself, and Tim had stepped up. Not trying to replace Jason, but Batman needed a Robin. Especially then. And no one had talked much about Jason Todd because it would always be a fresh, bleeding wound. Thought about him, often, but to verbalize it would be to pour salt into the deepest part.

Jason in the present was different. There was echoes of the kid he’d been, little flashes here and there that Tim, as a person that had only ever seen but not really known him, could see. But there was also a violent unpredictability that made Tim afraid.

He hated that he was scared. He was getting over it, slowly. He hated it because he knew how freaking hard Jason was trying even if it didn’t always seem like it. That even just being in the vicinity of the bats and birds was a struggle for him.

But he’d woken up and attacked Dick in a blind panic, and Tim and Damian had only managed to pry him off and throw him backwards when Jason had started to snap out of it. He’d been proud that Damian hadn’t outright attacked Jason, but there had been something incredibly knowing in the kid’s expression when he’d caught sight of the blazing lime green of Jason’s irises. And Tim had remembered exactly who had thrown Jason into the lazarus pit.

He’d had several blocks to think, and he couldn’t pin down why the hell Jason would have taken off the helmet. He was too intelligent to do it without a damn good reason in that situation.

It wasn’t like he’d never seen him take it off on patrol. They’d done a few joint ones, when Tim had wanted to spend a little time in Park Row. Jason unclasping the cherry-red helmet, tucking it under his arm as he stopped to talk to a couple of what looked like homeless kids. It was a smart move; kids were always less afraid of the dominos.

It was also more strategic than Tim had thought Jason to be. An exercise in trust, even if it was a fake one. The infamous Red Hood taking off his namesake helmet specifically to talk to them. A nod to those kids that knew more than they should.

All the things Jason had been through had changed him. In Tim’s mind, it was like a rock. Starting out as just a clump of pressed sediment. But then it gets changed. Maybe it gets eroded, turning smooth like river stones. Maybe the shape changes. Maybe it breaks into smaller pieces.

Jason’s rock had gone metamorphic even before he was Robin. Pressure evolving it into something else. From what he’d heard, into too much responsibility for a kid to handle alone. Into trust issues and a cynic realism he never outgrew, even with a place in a home and a tentative family.

Everything else had gone igneous. Heat and anger and a firestorm of terrible reworking the rock into something hard and dangerous. An obsidian arrowhead ready to fire. A blade ready to strike, and enough paranoia to rock the heavens. Rage incarnate, when the mood took him.

And now they were going to his apartment. One that he’d very intentionally not told them the location of, even though he’d been back for a week.

Fun.

Red Robin and Nightwing beat Batman and Robin by mere seconds, and they stand side-by-side on the fire escape for a moment, like soldiers going into battle. They had no clue if it was going to be one.

The moment is interrupted by Roy, in torn-up jeans and a faded Flash t-shirt. He looks pissed off and worried at the same time, hair hanging loose around his face and shoulders. His eyes flick rabbit-quick over them and he steps aside, jerking his chin towards the interior in invitation.

“Get in.”

Bruce goes first, followed quickly by the rest of them. It’s not a bad apartment. Cozy without being tiny. Like a reversal of the last one; beat up furniture with nice walls and appliances instead of the other way around. Jason had only gotten back to Gotham about a week ago. Technically that had been Bludhaven, but it was clear that Jason had moved in the little he chose to keep with him to make it a home. That, and dog supplies.

Roy hadn’t been kidding. Tim nearly steps on an antler chew as his feet touch down from climbing through the window. He nudges it flush against the wall with his foot, staring at it for a moment longer than normal in something akin to awe. His eye also caught on the raised food bowls against the wall in the meager kitchen, patterned with stars and moons in midnight colors. The black and red leash hanging next to the door on a nail was the end all to yeah, he’d gone out and gotten a pet.

The archer pads back presumably the way he came, they follow, and halfway there Tim hears the sound of somebody violently throwing up. All of them pause except for Bruce.

He takes off the cowl, puts it on the floor next to the bathroom door and waits for the sounds of Jason being sick to abate before he knocks.

There’s a beat of silence before they hear him spit. The toilet flushes, and Jason does the funniest thing on the planet.

He knocks back.

It’s clearly with one of his feet, low to the floor and a damper sound, but not the banging thuds they’d heard over the phone where Jason had clearly been putting some muscle and emotion behind it. It’s light. Like he’s trying to make it seem like he’s knocking with his knuckles instead of his foot.

Roy leans against the wall close enough to reach out and touch Bruce’s shoulder. The archer is thrumming with anxiety, tapping a beat into his thigh with his fingertips and chewing on the inside of his mouth. The waves of nervous energy bleed into him a little, and he does his best to ignore it.

“Who is it?” Bruce asked, voice casual. Like they weren’t doing a knock-knock joke through a locked door in the middle of the night with a possibly dying and definitely delirious Jason Todd.

“ ‘S Jason. Surprise.” a voice croaks from inside, crackling like tires on gravel as he stretches the last word in a sing-song tone. His voice is bits and pieces of what it was supposed to be, raw with smoke and sickness.

“Hello Jason, it’s Bruce. Can you open the door?”

“Nope.” Jason cackles, evidently finding his own refusal hilarious. The shredding sound of his voice is hoarse and painful enough to make Dick visibly wince.

The corner of Bruce’s mouth quirks even further down, dark eyebrows drawing together. The juxtaposition of Bruce in the suit without the cowl is a world’s colliding kind of scenario in Tim’s mind. “Jason, you’re sick. Let me in.” Bruce tries again, a little more forcefully this time. Traces of the batman growl.

“Oh.” Jason says faintly. “That explains a lot.”

There’s a drawn-out whine from inside the bathroom. There was the dog. Jason, clearly not speaking to any of them, offers up a raspy “I know, right?” in the loudest stage-whisper he can manage.

Jason dissolves into a fit of coughing before he can say anything else. Something sharp flickers across Bruce’s face at the sound, and it’s clear that something is wrong with Jason’s lungs by the sound they make when he tries to pull breaths in between. Thick and wet, if he didn’t know better he’d think that he’d aspirated water.

“I’m coming in.” Bruce decides. Without a word, Roy reached an arm over his shoulder and offered him a lockpick kit Tim hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

Another bad idea. He can understand why Roy hadn’t fully gone through with it. Even if he put on his gear, it didn’t have any sleeves. If the dog decided enough was enough over the intruders to Jason’s makeshift sanctuary, it would be able to bite the kevlar on Bruce’s arm and not straight into flesh.

Bruce kneels, and the second he starts to fiddle with the lock a deep growl resonates from inside the bathroom. It sounds like Jason’s locked himself in with a freaking tiger, but Bruce only pauses for half a second to assess before going back to it. How the hell the dog knew the tiny metal noises meant messing with the lock, Tim would never know.

Within a minute, Bruce coaxes the lock into giving up. They could have broken the door down but risked possibly hurting Jason and his doggy ally in the process.

Bruce positions himself between them before he cracks open the door. The growling picks up as the biggest, angriest looking pit bull Tim has ever seen lays eyes on the Dark Knight.

Sitting fully-clothed in the bathtub, was Jason. He was sat widthwise instead of lengthwise with his legs dangling over the side. He’s still got his boots on but it looks like he’d made an effort to get them off. The laces dangle down to the tile from where he’d undone the knot and yanked at them, displaced dirt and ash peppering the floor underneath.

He looks like hell. More accurately, like he just crawled out of hell. Soot is smeared on his face, a clean imprint in a pattern around his eyes where his domino had been like a reverse raccoon. The shaking was so bad

He’d stripped off the layer of body armor and traded his undershirt for a thick sweatshirt advertising Gotham U in bold lettering across the front. Sweat soaked his hair, glistening on his skin in the fluorescent lights. Jason had gotten a decent tan in the months he’d been away, but even so the color is drained from his face aside from the fever-flush on his cheeks.

The dog is right next to him, standing with its front paws on the cracked rim of the tub. The ears are back, teeth bared with a continuous growl and hackles raised. Its bark definitely fit its body; the thing was a big, solid dog. Dick shifts in front of Damian, who elbows him in the ribs with a pinched look on his face.

It couldn’t be clearer that Bruce does not like what’s going on. His eyes dart over Jason, taking in the fever-bright (but blue-green. Not lime, Tim notes) eyes, the shivering, the sweating. Every line of his body screams ‘don’t like this, resolve the situation’.

Jason looks from the dog, to each of them in turn, and then back to the dog. He repeats this a few times, enough to be comical if the situation was different, before he reaches over and loops his arms around the dog’s neck in a loose hug. He shushes gently, like he’d trying to quiet a kid in a library, and mumbles something that Tim can’t catch.

The growling stops immediately, and the pit bull turns its head to check on Jason. It snuffles at his face for a second, and then seemingly satisfied turns her attention back to them. She’s not growling anymore, but the look in her dark eyes is a clear statement that she’ll do a lot worse than just growl to protect Jason.

“I got a dog.” he says weakly. His breathing sounds like a garbage disposal. Gravel and rust.

“Jaybird, you need to come with us.” Dick urged, “Right now, okay?”

His fingers tighten to hold onto the dog’s collar, getting a little green for a few seconds before it passes. Bruce creeps halfway across the floor and the dog allows it. So does Jason.

Jason’s distracted by something else. His eyes settle on Damian and stay there, laser focused on the kid. In an instant, the aloof, almost drunken attitude sours into something that reeks of fear.

“There’s never been two before.” Jason breathes, chest heaving shallowly with the effort to draw air into his lungs “He’s gonna come back. You can’t be here when he comes back. Don’t tell Dad.” he whispers, shaking his head but not taking his eyes off of Robin.

Jason tries to get up and starts to fall, and Bruce lunges forward to grab him. The dog growls like a menace, feinting like it’s going to snap at him, but lets him. It might be starting to get that its master isn’t totally home right now.

Jason latches onto Bruce and pulls him close, who can’t let go or Jason’ll slip and bash his head in on the edge of the tub. Jay gets in his face until they’re inches apart.

“Get them out of here before he comes back.” he rasps, voice a desperate hiss and eyes fever-wild, “You don’t know, Bruce, you don’t know and I don’t want you to fucking see it.”

It’s like fear toxin without the screaming, and the look in Jason’s eyes stays with Tim for a week.

Bruce, having had enough and more than a little terrified, half-carries a now incoherently mumbling Jason out of the bathroom. The dog leaps out of the tub and scrambled to follow. It stays so glued to his side that Tim’s halfway afraid that it’s going to get kicked by accident in Jason’s uncoordinated state.

Damian, who looks deeply unsettled at being the epicenter that spawned Jason’s brief terror, sticks nearly as close to Dick as the dog sticks to Jason.

Roy grabbed the leash and carefully clipped it to the dog’s collar, who looked like it didn’t give a shit about them anymore. Tim grabs the helmet off the floor and puts it on Jason’s head. He fights for half a second, putting up token resistance, before giving up.

He doesn’t see who ties Jason’s shoes so he doesn’t trip on the dragging laces, but they're out in the hallway in thirty seconds, everyone cowled, dominoed, or otherwise. Roy somehow had the time to put on a domino and pull on a hoodie while Jason had been having his panic in the bathroom. The hood’s yanked over his head in an effort to conceal his identity, ginger locks tucked into the back to hide them.

He’d also found and stolen Jason’s keys, apparently, because he’s the one to lock the door behind them.

And then they get to the elevator.

Jason puts up more than token resistance at getting in the elevator. The dog isn’t too thrilled about it either, and it would be a pretty funny sitcom scene if the reasons were different. A band of vigilante’s trying to force a delirious guy in a helmet and an upset pit bull into what had to be the world’s sketchiest elevator while a tiny ninja kept the doors open. Dick’s trying to calm him down, talking softly without raising his voice, Bruce had an arm around his shoulders and is applying pressure to try and coax him to move forward, Tim’s keeping lookout, and none of them are making progress.

Roy’s the one to solve it. He storms up and shoulders Dick, who Jason had bitten at one point in trying to force him in (thank god he didn’t feel like shooting anyone, Tim had sneakily taken the easily accessible knives off his person but he’d feel the weight of one of his guns leaving him), and grabs his hand.

One arm snakes around his shoulders, cutting Bruce out who tries and almost succeeds to not look hurt, the other still holding his hand.

“It doesn’t smell like dirt.” he says, voice low with a gentle quality Tim hadn’t thought him capable of, “And you can stand in the middle without touching the walls, look at it.” His cheeks slowly turn an interesting shade of red as he very pointedly doesn’t look at them, just repeats himself until Jason mumbled along under his wheezing breath. They move together as a unit, step by step, until Jason crosses the threshold, the wary look in his eyes like he expected the walls to cave in and kill them at any moment.

Oh.

Jason’s claustrophobic. And delirious.

Oh.

Tim feels a spark of guilt but tamps it down. They’re idiots, why wouldn’t he be, but it’s not the time to feel bad right now. Once Jason’s in, the dog follows with enough trepidation for three more, and presses itself firmly against his leg.

Duke’s waiting outside with one of the batmobiles, the second one parked next to it from where Bruce and Damian had driven up. Tim can tell he’s staring at Jason behind the helmet by the way his head moves just a few inches when they walk out. Tim hadn’t thought about the fact that not all of them would fit, thank god for Duke planning ahead.

Jason’s more passively confused now than aggressive or panicky, tired and faltering, and it doesn’t take any work for Roy to get him into the back seat of the batmobile Bruce is driving. Nobody challenges him for the right to be back there with him; the redhead looks half a second from ripping their heads off if they dared to try. Probably one of the reasons he and Jason got along like a house on fire.

The last Tim sees of them before he runs for the other car with Damian and Duke on orders from Bruce is Roy slamming the door in their faces. His wiry fingers still intertwined with Jason’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to take care of some medical stuff yesterday, so here it is today!


	10. Med-Bay Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce worries over a son who needs to worry more about himself.

Tim had been right on the money; Jason had carbon monoxide poisoning. Bruce bites his tongue and they call Leslie, who goes to work on him with Alfred. A flurry of running tox-screens, x-raying his chest, and taking blood samples. Asking him questions he can’t or won’t answer. They put him on oxygen and he’s so out of it he doesn’t even put up a fight. Dazed, unless he looks at Damian, and then dazed turns to barely controlled fear he can’t figure out.

Bruce feels like someone punched him in the gut. It’s like that when any of his kids get injured, but something about this specific time knocks him for a loop. It feels like every time he sees him, Jason is hurting in some way.

He’d sent the boys back out. People in cities liked to commit crimes while fires raged; they ate up a lot of attention, media and otherwise, that would otherwise be on them. It didn’t require all of them to handle, and it went unspoken even though all of them knew it, but something deep in his chest needed them to stick close to each other. It had been hard enough for Barbara to convince Cass and Stephanie not to come in. Duke had set his jaw in the way he always did when something was bothering his, put on his helmet, and tore out of the cave on his motorcycle to head back to the business district.

Roy had left, too. Headed for a safehouse to change before going back to Crime Alley, coiled up energy like a snake ready to strike and eager to get out before he did.

And Bruce was terrified.

Terrified, because his son had disappeared with only a text message and a packed-up apartment to tell he was gone. Terrified, because for whatever reason, Jason had put his earpiece in but never bothered to turn it on for the night. Terrified, because if Roy hadn’t chosen that moment to waltz in unannounced, Jason would have died alone on the bathroom floor.

There’s an oxygen mask on his face and an IV feeding cool fluids into the crook of his arm. When they’d brought him in, he’d been severely dehydrated from vomiting. Nearly threw up on Dick before they could shove a trash can into his hands. Disoriented. Mumbling nonsense to himself and others. A laundry list of problems.

So Bruce sits next to him, stays terrified, and holds his son’s hand as he dozes because he doesn’t know what else to do. There had been a moment of raw panic when Jason’s eyes slid shut until Leslie had gotten him to come around again in a few minutes. Worn out. Continually scaring the hell out of all of them, even when he wasn’t even trying.

Leslie also informs him that Jay has pneumonia. Bruce almost laughs, because of course he does. Why not? He wants to kick the universe in the teeth and tell it to leave his kid alone.

It’s just starting out, Jason very well might not have even been aware of what it was and wrote it off, she’d explained, and the smoke and exertion of running through a building as it burned around him exacerbated the budding sickness until it knocked him down.

It explains the hacking cough and fever. She’d been outright alarmed the first time Jason had been brought in injured, when Roy had cautiously informed her as Alfred splinted his leg that Jason’s body temperature ran a full 2 degrees colder than it should on average. He was running one hell of a fever already, should they add the extra 2 degrees to scale it? Were they trying to bring his body temperature back down to their normal, or to his and risk somehow hurting him in the process?

Bruce felt like he was going to be sick.

They’d called Leslie. There’s a simmering well of anger in his gut that belongs to her, carved out by what happened with Stephanie. But Dick had taken one look at him and snapped that it was ‘Not the fucking time, Bruce.’

He knows. But no matter what happens, Jason is still his son. That is his kid, lying on a medical cot, breathing like he’s got glass in his lungs, and Bruce can’t bring himself to leave him alone. There are many things he can do, and that is not one of them.

It had been the same when Jason leapt in front of Damian to shield him from the blast. Risking life and limb for a child that, at that point, he hadn’t liked or even known. And Bruce had watched with his heart in his stomach as one son tackled another, all of them a semi-circle of too far away. Listened to Tim and Stephanie frantically check over Damian as he helped Dick rip off the jacket that had caught fire at the shoulder. Jason had still been burned, and Bruce knew it had scarred.

It had brought back so much that threatened to drag him down and choke the life out of him. The night at the warehouse when he’d been too late. The heat, the acrid smell of burnt hair. Flaming rubble all around, and the slickness of blood against the fingers of the suit as he held his son. A Jason Todd that didn’t move, no matter how hard he begged and pleaded with the universe to make it stop. Rewind time and let Bruce get there just one minute earlier.

Bruce had sat at Jason’s bedside and waited until the second the drugs keeping him under had started to wear off. Roy had gritted his teeth and kept his mouth shut. And had never told. It turned out that Jay had taken another 20 minutes to really come around, but it didn’t matter.

He’d shared a look with Bruce before going out to grab his gear and hit the streets, cowl-less and close enough to reach out and touch his wounded son. Focused in on the hand that held Jason’s. As he looked up and locked eyes, there was a perfect replication of the look he’d seen the first time. The same silent warning before he’d turned on his heel and disappeared. Roy Harper would fight lions for Jay, a bat was no question.

And now he’s here again, holding the hand of a son that has no idea he’s there. Trying to stamp down his anxieties because his oldest was right; it wasn’t the time.

Jason’s fingers twitched in his, but he stays still for a few more moments. Bruce recognizes the action for what it is; intelligence gathering. Better to fake sleep and figure out where you are and who you’re with, if you don’t know when you wake up.

At the sound of Alfred’s voice, Jay seems to get a little clarity. A blue-green eye cracks open. Zeroes in on Bruce and narrows in something that looks like mildly drunk suspicion. It doesn’t last long before he gets distracted and goes cross-eyed trying to look at the oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. He tries to bring up a hand, presumably to try and bat off the mask he still needed, eyebrows knitting when he realized that he couldn’t because it was being held hostage by Bruce. He doesn’t try with his other one.

Alfred and Leslie swarm the second he comes around, but Bruce doesn’t let go and Jason doesn’t try to make him. They ask him a battery of questions and even though he’s still fairly confused, it’s clear that he’s more lucid than he was earlier.

Tim wasn’t coming within ten feet of Jason.

They couldn’t risk it. Bruce had been careful, keeping Tim behind him when they’d gone to collect Jason. Making sure it was himself, Dick, or Roy there to support Jason’s weight when he shook on his feet like he had hypothermia. Sending Tim to the other car instead of the one with them. There was no spleen in his body to protect him and Jay wasn’t lucid enough to be careful.

Alfred and Leslie had gotten him out of the rest of his armor with minimal fuss. Shin guards, helmet, battered boots, belt, and holsters were all piled on a cart in Jason’s eyeline so he could see but not touch.

He looked absolutely miserable laying there shirtless in a pair of athletic shorts Dick had supplied, shivering like a wet kitten. The hand that isn’t occupied by Bruce’s drifts off the table, arm hanging down to gently stroke his fingers on the crown of his dog’s head.

Bruce snakes an arm around his back to help him sit up when he starts coughing and can’t stop. He lets go of his hand and Jason yanks off his mask, doubling over in an effort to try and hack the gunk out of his lungs.

Even back in the few times Jason had been ill when he was younger, Bruce couldn’t remember a time when he’d sounded this sick. There’s a brief flash of a memory. Jason, sitting on the couch in his Robin uniform, sniffling back a runny nose as they cancelled patrol to watch movies together, until he’d fallen asleep into Bruce’s shoulder.

Bruce wouldn’t know how close Jason had come to losing that, one of his most cherished, memory. That he’d tried to get rid of it. Insisted that he didn’t want it, don’t give it back just keep it. And it had gone back into his head anyway. Years later he’d be glad it wasn’t lost to him, but remembered how painful it had been at the time. A raw, festering wound of hurt feelings and betrayal that had bled and rioted and made him feel like utter shit.

Bruce wouldn’t know. Jason had never told him.

Jason coughs until it sounds like he’s choking, makes a face and spits a wad of phlegm into the basin Alfred had handed him. He’s still as a statue. Curled around the basin until Bruce takes it and sets it aside, handing him back the mask as Jay pulls shallow breaths now that he’s able.

He stays stubbornly curled up for a few minutes, limbs drawn stiffly into his core like a dead spider, until he surrenders to his own fatigue and lays back down with an irritated huff. His head flopped to the side, sweat-damp black hair splaying against the white material of the cot.

Blue-green eyes close. Jason mumbles something, but he’d barely moved his mouth to talk and was facing away so it’s completely indecipherable.

“What?”

“Lillian Sung.” he repeats, audibly trying harder on the consonants to make himself understandable.

Bruce’s brow furrows, but he doesn’t ask further. Doesn’t take his hand again. Leans back in the chair and exists as Jason drifts. Leslie confirms that it’s bacterial, not viral, and he should be started on antibiotics immediately. Expresses concern that his fever has barely gone down with the cooled IV fluids.

Roy walks in right as she suggests putting Jason in a lukewarm bath. He pauses, eyes flickering to each of them like a flame, and very quietly says, “Put him in the shower.”

“He can hardly stand!” Leslie protests, crossing her arms with the intention to glare him down.

Roy shrugs. Not looking at any of them and suddenly finding the wall immensely interesting. He hadn’t even left for very long, yet he’s in full gear. Did he suit up just to come back? “He’s scared of being submerged in water. Doesn’t care as long as it’s cold, but you can’t throw him in an ice bath without making him shiver even more and that’ll make it worse. Put him in the shower.” he says shortly, sitting down hard in the chair next to Bruce.

“Shower it is, then.” Alfred says tersely. They monitor the level of C02 in his blood until it’s at a level where he could do without the mask for ten minutes or so. The second it’s verbalized, Jason shifts his legs towards the side of the cot. A show that he’s listening, more lucid than they’d assumed, even if the motion is sluggish and uncoordinated. It’s permission to get him up and get it over with.

He keeps his eyes closed as they help/drag him up, and Bruce is careful to keep him on even footing as they stumble to the showers.

It turns into him bracing Jason on one side while Roy stands on the other, one of his arms over each of their shoulders, because he’s stubborn as a mule and refuses to sit down.

Tepid water rains down on them from the showerhead, and within minutes they’re a mess. Both of them just as soaked as Jason, Bruce in a suit of kevlar and fabric and Roy in leather. Bruce almost laughs when Jay gives it away, smirking as he struggles to fight back a coughing fit and then loses, and he realizes how on purpose it is. A tiny sliver of revenge for interrupting his bathtub reverie, because if he’s going to be miserable then they are too.

Jason had come to the manor guarded, so many walls up that you could call it a fortress. Didn’t trust them for weeks. But after a while, the walls receded and Bruce’s theory about Jason’s true personality were proven correct.

Jay was a ball of mischief. All cheeky grins and razor sharp wit, wisecracking with petty criminals one second and throwing punches the next. Bold, brave, and stubborn, and the only kid that quoted Shakespearean literature that Bruce had ever met. Still defensive, still bitter, but there was a whole lot more to Jason Todd than the surly anger that had taken a swing at him with a tire iron after he attempted (very nearly succeeded) to steal the tires off the batmobile. The violent tendencies had been worrying. Maybe he should have worried more. But the action is so purely Jason that he has to try hard not to smile.

He knows Roy picks up on Jason’s scheme as well. Oliver’s ex-prodigy doesn’t get annoyed like Bruce assumed he would. Instead he rolls his eyes fondly and readjusts his grip on Jason’s arm, who was leaning more and more of his weight on them as time went on until they were nearly supporting him entirely.

But he’s cooler. Still fevered, but the oxygen mask needs to go back on. They dry off as best as they can with two of them in gear and a fever-addled Jason. They lose track of said fever-addled son, and only thirty seconds later he slumps back onto the cot in a pair of obnoxiously purple striped pajama bottoms that he’s positive are Dick’s.

His eyes drift over to the table that had had his gear on it, a scowl forming on his face. Bruce traces his line of sight and realizes with a sense of impending dread that Jason’s holsters have vanished.

The dread lessens when he realizes that Jason is scowling because he doesn’t have them and doesn’t know where they are. Relief washes over him like a tidal wave. He’s not fond of firearms on the best of days, even less so when they’re in the hands of one of his kids, and all he can think of is scenarios where Jason’s fever spikes and something sets him off. They’d almost accidentally forced him into confronting a fear Bruce hadn’t even known about. And was apparently bad enough for Roy to deem it alright to reveal it to them to avoid a situation. And that was after already forcing his delirious and apparently claustrophobic son into a confined space.

Roy, who had also been standing suspiciously close to the pile of Jason’s gear in the half-minute he’d gone to steal clothes. Ignoring the scowl with a passive look of complete innocence on his face as he inspected the IV stand to ensure it hadn’t had any problems after they’d dragged it back and forth to the showers. Sneaky… he’d ask after the hiding place later, even if the presence of two guns somewhere in the cave unnerved him.

Jason grabs the oxygen mask and pulls it on. Done with not being able to breath and willing to take any assistance he could get. Bruce is less terrified than he was before.

Before they hadn’t known the extent of the carbon monoxide exposure. Now, Jason’s mostly alert. Out of the woods for brain damage or death, but he was going to feel terrible for more than a few hours.

Standing in the shower had washed the streaky soot off of his face, and something about the fact that Bruce wouldn’t be able to tell he’d been running through a burning apartment building an hour or so ago (wasn’t sure, he’d lost track of time) if he hadn’t already known makes it less distressing. Less, but not entirely.

Jason is strong, and he’s capable, but he’s still his kid and he’s damn well going to worry about him. He just wishes that Jay would worry more about himself.


	11. Thank You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce talks with his son, and the dog finally gets a name.

There have been a lot of times in his life when he physically felt like complete shit. Like life had hit him with a double decker bus, and all the stupid tourists had flooded out to take pictures of the poor sucker they’d mowed down on their lovely vacation.

This one is up there.

His chest hurts, and he’s got a killer headache, but that’s not the worst of it. The worst is that breathing sucks. It’s not the painful grind of broken bone and blood that it had been when he’d taken a crowbar to the ribs on loop. It’s more like there’s a dying well in his lungs. Just a dingy puddle of water at the bottom that makes deep breathing agitate the muscle and send him into a fit of hacking coughs that sound like a drowning victim.

There’s a gap in his memory. It’s not swiss cheese, like the weeks after his resurrection, more of a solid fabric with worn out spots he could see through if he held it up to the light. Throwing up. He’s pretty sure he was sitting in a bathtub with his dog at one point. Someone holding his hand.

But he doesn’t remember the bats breaking into his apartment and abducting him and his dog, who he really needs to come up with a permanent name for. He’s annoyed, but he’s not petty enough to wish they’d let him succumb on the bathroom floor. Maybe he’s a little more ambiguous on life than was healthy, but he sure as shit didn’t want to die. Been there, done that, wouldn’t recommend it. Jason would leave an absolutely scathing Yelp review if it were possible.

He’s never had pneumonia before. Part of the reason why he’d pinned it as something else. He’d gotten in a position on patrol that meant either a knife to the leg or a pretty ugly kick to the ribs, and he’d taken the obvious choice. It made sense that breathing in deeply wouldn’t feel fantastic for a while.

Coughing; his dusty as hell apartment he hadn’t bothered to clean before moving in, and being in a smoky building for probably too long in hindsight.

The smoke inhalation bit… that was worse. He’d been so out of it he’d nearly killed himself by accident. Roy had a working theory that the exposure to the pit made him harder to kill. He’d maintained that it was a load of garbage, until he thought back to how much he’d had the helmet off. Breathing thick smoke, getting lightheaded, feeling like he was about to hurl as he busted down doors. Wasn’t going to admit it though.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Oh shit. He turned from where he’d taken a brief leaning against the wall break, as you do when you get breathless in the middle of a goddamn hallway, to see Bruce’s head poking out from the library. He didn’t look thrilled to see Jason out of bed.

The peppering of grey hairs at his temples kept throwing him off guard; he called him ‘old man’ on occasion but never really thought of Bruce as getting older. Batman didn’t get grey hair.

“Tap dancing. Can’t you tell? I thought it looked great.” he croaked. He cringed at the sound of his voice. A few days of trying to cough your lungs out tended to make you sound like you’d run your vocal chords through the shredder. Who knew?

Bruce frowned, not thinking it was as funny as Jason did. “You should be in bed.” he informed him. Like he didn’t already know that and was choosing to ignore it.

“I was. Now I’m not. Crazy how that works, isn’t it?”

Bruce’s mouth quirked in the way it did when Jason had started to crack the reprimanding facade of sternness. Something in his gut twisted unpleasantly at the memory.

That kept happening, but it was less than before he’d taken his sudden sabbatical from Gotham. Seeing things that reminded him of when he was a kid; a box of the black citrus tea he used to share with Alfred on a shelf in the cabinet. The crackling of the fireplace. He’d used to sit in front of it and do his homework or read, kicking his feet back and forth and chewing on his pencil.

It felt less… bad? Gone from a stinging in his heart to just a hollow ‘oh’.

“Jay, you should be in bed.” Bruce repeated, stepping closer until he was right next to him. The way Bruce looked over him for clues to try and assess how sickly he was feeling at the moment made his skin itch. A barb on his tongue that he bit back because he was still trying, damn it.

“Going a little stir-crazy.” he answered honestly, holding up his hands for Bruce to see, “But I’ve got gloves and a mask on for Mr. ‘I Have No Spleen’.”

It had taken a couple of hours of peer-pressuring, threats of the bats going with him to make sure he didn’t drop dead of pneumonia in his apartment, a very stern few words from Alfred, and one ‘don’t make me break your leg, Jay, I swear to god’ from Roy. The mask and gloves were Duke’s idea, and the straw that broke the camel’s back for him staying in the Manor. The last of his arguments shot down with a deadly aim. They were irritatingly insistent, but he’d scared the shit out of them, so he couldn’t really blame them for it.

Jay would have felt pretty rotten if he accidentally gave the kid with a compromised immune system freaking pneumonia. He’d have insisted on wearing the getup anyway the second he caved.

“Care to join me?” Bruce offered, tilting his head back towards the door he’d left open to chase after the germ-ridden vigilante roaming his hallways.

Bruce expects him to fight. To blow him off in search of something to do. Say he has to take the dog at his heels out, or that he needs some fresh air, or that he’s allergic to newsprint. He’d been cagey since Zsasz’s charred body had been discovered among burned remains of the upper floors of Ironwood Apartments.

Jason hadn’t killed him, but it had hurt to see the walls slam up as he told them how he’d found Victor Zsasz already dead, like he expected the last thing they would do was believe him that the Arkham escapee had been shot by his intended victim instead of the Red Hood. It had been hard, but Bruce had reserved judgement until it was revealed that the caliber of the bullet that killed him hadn’t been one of Jay’s. There still wasn’t a lot of trust, but it was getting better. Slowly and painfully, but it was getting there.

Instead, Jason just shrugs and wanders into the library, blanket around his shoulders trailing like a cape. Bruce smiles when his back is turned, shutting the heavy oak doors behind them. When he turns back around, Jason’s thrown himself down onto the overstuffed couch.

The dog, who had at that point become something of his shadow, leapt up to lie on top of his legs. Jason picks up his head for a second to look at her, scratches her behind the ears, and flops his head back dramatically against the arm of the sofa.

“Roy’s asleep.” he rasped, staring at the ceiling as he talked to open air and presumably also Bruce. “Damian and Duke are at school, Stephanie’s at college, Alfred’s being Alfred, Barbara’s busy, pretty sure Dick is still a cop, and I’d be willing to bet Tim’s at the office. That leaves you and Cass.”

“Cass is at ballet.”

He makes an attempt at clearing his throat. “Huh. Didn’t know she did that. Still doesn’t answer the question of what you’re doing.”

Bruce reclaimed his seat on the other couch, eyes going back to the spread of files across the coffee table. “Working.”

At Jason’s pointed look, he went on. “Wayne Industries is providing the funding for a new Boys & Girls Club.”

“In the East End.” he finished.

“Yeah.” 

Two thoughts crossed his mind at the same time. ‘How the hell did he know that’ and ‘Of course he knows that’.

Jason’s head lolled to the side, deciding to converse with Bruce instead of the ceiling.

He stared for a few seconds, resting a hand on the dog’s back. There was fatigue in every movement. He wasn’t bothering to put up a front like he was feeling better. Pneumonia was a beast, and it had knocked Jason firmly off his feet and kept him there. “Building’s gonna have to be under my protection, or anyone that uses it’ll be targeted as prospects.” he warned, keeping his voice even. “Lotta kids running drugs in my neck of the woods. Not their fault.”

Not a threat, Bruce cataloged. Jason had a huge weak spot for the kids in Crime Alley. Anyone caught selling drugs to children or forcing them to deal got a one-way ticket to Gotham General Hospital before jail, courtesy of a very angry Red Hood. Of all of Jason’s vices, that one bothered Bruce the least.

He fished a paper out of the spread and uncapped his pen, signing at the bottom. “Let us know if you need backup on that.”

“Hm.”

Silence stretched. Jason was biting his tongue, Bruce could tell there was something he wanted to say. Which was concerning, considering he rarely had a problem saying exactly what he thought. “Jay?”

“I can’t sleep.” he complained, bordered very close to whining, the hoarseness of his voice turning it into something of a horrendous croak.

“Damian told me about your episode with Dick.”

He knew it was the wrong thing to say the second it came out of his mouth. Any trace of the relaxed position he’d been in disappeared like the words had triggered a switch, Jason’s expression darkened as his shoulders stiffened, jaw ticking with anger.

“You are gonna wanna be real fuckin’ careful how you phrase that, old man.” he growled, words clipped and accent thicker than he'd heard it in a long time.

“I’m not trying to fight with you.” he said calmly, “It’s a PTSD reaction. And it’s happened to me before. Nightmares, confusion for someone waking you up for being attacked, insomnia. I’m just saying that I understand, Jay-lad.”

Jason’s mouth twisted unhappily at the old nickname, but he didn’t call him out on it. Progress.

“I tried to strangle Dick.” he admitted, even though they both knew that Bruce had been told already, “And I punched Kori once. She got me back, though; gave me a black eye before she realized. I stopped sleeping with a gun the first time it happened.”

Bruce couldn’t respond before Jason went on, running him over with a sense of urgency. He didn’t even know what he would have said.

“They’re hovering. Roy knows better, but I need you to keep them away if I’m asleep, cause they’re not gonna listen to me.” he asked. Less angry, but Bruce didn’t think it would be possible for him to look any more uncomfortable having this conversation.

He raised an eyebrow, capping the pen and setting it back on the table. It could wait. “And you think they’d listen to me?”

Jason rolled his eyes, shifting to face him a little more but staying lying down. He’d have to displace 80 pounds of sleeping pit bull to manage any more. “Dick, Tim, and Damian probably would. I kinda scared the ever-loving shit out of them, they know what happens. I don’t have to ask Roy; he already knows. Steph, Babs, Duke, and Cass are the problem. And maybe Alfred; he’d get worried. And I don’t want to fucking deal with this, alright?”

He was scared of hurting one of them, and it was taking a lot for him to talk about it. “I’ll keep it vague.” he promised.

Jason grumbles a thanks.

“Does she help?” he asked bluntly, eyeing the dog for a second before going back to the paperwork. He’d wanted to do a final read through of the contracts himself to make sure everything was how it should be. She was no Titus, but she was still massive. Definitely as big as Ace, if not an inch or so bigger.

He’s quiet for a moment before he answers. “Yeah, she does.” Jason yawned behind the mask, eyes scrunching closed. He blinked sleepily and tried to carefully clear his throat with a half-success. It sent him into a brief coughing fit. Bruce could hear the liquid in his lungs as he hacked, coughing into the crook of his arm even though he had a mask covering his nose and mouth.

“Roy didn’t know you had her.” he ventured, getting up and handing Jason the unopened bottle of water that had been sitting on the coffee table. He took a sip, swallowing with a wince.

“If you’re gonna ask, just ask.” Jason muttered, capping the bottle and putting it next to him. He wrapped the thin blanket he’d brought in with him tighter around his upper body with a poorly suppressed shiver. Bruce would turn the heat up or start a fire going in the fireplace if it wasn’t for the low-grade fever Jay was still running. Instead, he offered his hand to ‘GD’, who had woken up when the coughing had started.

“Where did you get her? She seems well trained.” he asked. The dog didn’t seem terribly interested in him, but he could tell she had a sweet temperament.

Jason snorted, something funny about it to him. “In an alley, digging through the garbage for dinner. Kindred spirits.” he croaked, “I’ve had her less than a week. Can’t guarantee the safety of your shoes. And I don’t know how she feels about kids, so you might want to keep her away from Damian”

That ship had long since sailed. Jason would likely be informed tomorrow that his dog now knew how to shake hands and sit on command. Either Jay was going to have to bring her to visit the next time he came to the manor, or he was about to get a lot of impromptu visits from Bruce’s youngest son.

Her tail thumped against the back cushions of the couch. Jay grinned, continuing to pet her. “Yes, you.” he cooed, the hoarseness breaking his voice. “Anybody figured out what her name means, yet?”

“The top runners are Green Day, Girl Dog, Good Dog, and that GD is the name of a gang. Nobody thinks you named her after a gang; they just can’t crack it.”

Jason smirks, shaking his head. Immensely pleased as stumping the other children of the world’s greatest detective. “Nope. It means Garbage Dog. Don’t give me that look, it’s temporary. I was thinking maybe Athena.”

“Athena.” Bruce parroted, “Goddess of wisdom, strategy, warfare, skill, courage, and… a few others I don’t remember.” he admitted. “That’s a lot to live up to.”

Jay shrugs, snuggling further into the couch. He’s in the beginning stages of falling asleep, even if he’s trying not to. He’d always slept like the dead when he’d been sick as a child. Bruce mentally winces at the unfortunate word choice.

Jason could joke about his own death; Bruce couldn’t.

“I think she’s got it. You should see her can tipping game, it’s insane. Doggy goddess of strategy and skill.” he mumbled, staying silent for a moment before adding “And trash cans.” Sensing Jason’s flagging energy, the newly dubbed ‘Athena’ settled back into a position for sleeping. Bruce didn’t say anything more, and Jason was out like a light within the next thirty seconds, the last thing he says a mumbled 'thank you'.

He rests a hand on Athena’s silky head, smoothing the fur down gently. She blinks at him, but doesn’t move from where she’s keeping Jason’s legs warm.

She helps. Helps with the nightmares. Helps with coming out of them. From what he’s seen, helps Jason to be happy in ways that none of them can.

Bruce whispers a quick thanks, quiet enough that Jason might not be able to hear it even if he was still awake, and makes a mental note to see what Jay has by way of supplies for Athena in his apartment and fill in what he doesn’t. If he can’t spoil Jason, he’s going to spoil the hell out of his dog.

\----------------

EPILOGUE:

He can hear the shrieking from outside. Roy and Jason are currently introducing the rest of his gaggle of kids to a game they invented called ‘Snow Pit’. It involved wearing their kevlar underneath their coats, trading off wearing motorcycle helmets, and seeing how far they could tackle each other into a giant pile of snow. They’d cleared the driveway in preparation (no easy task), and had been playing by themselves for a good ten minutes until Dick had gone outside to break up what he’d thought had been a fight and quickly been sucked into the game instead.

That had devolved into Cass, Damian, Duke, and Tim joining. Stephanie and Barbara were coming over later for dinner in a few hours, busy holed up in the Clocktower for ‘Girl’s Night’, the only one in a while that Cass had missed, not wanting to miss an early-morning rehearsal for her upcoming recital.

Damian takes a sprinting start on the path that they’d cleared as a runway before launching himself at Roy. The red-head goes flying backwards into the newly-rebuilt snow pile with Damian, white powder flying everywhere. Dick and Cass help to pull them out of the pile, the entire group eyeballing the depth of the indent as a group like a jury presiding over a case. Despite being the smallest, Damian clearly isn’t losing.

They deliberate for a minute, rearranging the rankings to fit in Damian’s score. There’s one moment where Jason and Roy lean together, Jay dusting the snow out of the other man’s hair with a grin. Roy leans in and whispers something to him, who laughs and snakes an arm around his waist to pull him closer.

Roy’s eyes go wide with a startled shriek as Jason lets himself fall backwards into the mountain of snow, dragging the archer with him. Tim, Dick, Duke, and Damian shovel handfuls of snow on top of them for disrupting their efforts to rebuild the pile for the next run.

Bruce can see the stars aligning before any of them do. Cass backing up and then running directly for them. Jason and Roy’s scramble out of the pile in a tangle of limbs and flying snow, Damian rolling out of the way as Cass tackles Tim with the force of a freight train.

Bruce grabs a coat from his bedroom, shrugging it on as he makes his way to the back door of the manor. Alfred gives him a knowing look as he passes him in the kitchen, handing him a pair of gloves that Bruce has no idea how he knew to get with a wink and a warning not to track snow into the house.

Life is good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The entire thing has been reuploaded! Working on another Jason fic that's pretty AU, but it's about halfway done!


End file.
